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Transcript of War Crimes Times--Fall 2010--Vol. II No. 4
The War Crimes Times WarCrimesTimes.org
“Exposing
the True Costs
of War”
I R A Q — R E B R A N D E D
“Seeking justice for the victims of war and prosecution for the war criminals”
A publication of
Vol. II No. 4 Fall 2010 Donations Welcome
Coalition Statement
The Iraq Debacle:
The Legacy of
Seven Years of
War We, the undersigned organizations
and individuals, mark the August 31st
partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Iraq with the following evaluation and
recommendations:
The United States, Israel,
and the Failure of the
Western Way of War by Andrew J. Bacevich
―In watching the flow of
events over the past decade or
so, it is hard to avoid the feeling
that something very fundamen-
tal has happened in world his-
tory.‖ This sentiment, introduc-
ing the essay that made Francis
Fukuyama a household name,
commands renewed attention
today, albeit from a different
perspective.
Developments during the
1980s, above all the winding
down of the Cold War, had con-
vinced Fukuyama that the ―end
of history‖ was at hand. ―The
triumph of the West, of the Western idea,‖ he wrote in 1989, ―is evi-
dent…in the total exhaustion of
viable systematic alternatives to
Western liberalism.‖
Today the West no longer
looks quite so triumphant. Yet
events during the first decade of
the present century have deliv-
ered history to another endpoint
of sorts. Although Western lib-
eralism may retain considerable
appeal, the Western way of war
has run its course.
For Fukuyama, history im-
plied ideological competition, a
contest pitting democratic capi-
talism against fascism and com-
munism. When he wrote his
famous essay, that contest was
reaching an apparently defini-
tive conclusion.
Yet from start to finish, mili-
tary might had determined that
competition‘s course as much as ideology. Throughout much of the
twentieth century, great powers
had vied with one another to
(See FAILURE OF WAR on page 16)
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy… What's in a name?
That which we call a combat troop / By any other name would smell as sweet;
* The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues
and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can
at best be called only a rebranded occupa-
tion. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be
reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be
50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors,
five huge ―enduring bases‖ and an Embassy the size
of Vatican City.
* The U.S. military’s overthrow of the
brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein did
not lead to a better life for Iraqis—just the
opposite. It resulted in the further destruction of ba-
sic infrastructure—electricity, water, sewage—that
continues to this day. The U.S. dropped more tons of
bombs on Iraq than in all of WWII, destroying Iraq‘s
electrical, water and sewage systems. Iraq‘s health
care and higher education systems, once the best in
the entire region, have been decimated. The U.S. war
on Iraq unleashed a wave of violence that has left over
one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced, as
well as ethnic rivalries that continue to plague the na-
tion. We have seriously wounded millions of Iraqis,
(See IRAQ DEBACLE on page 9)
INSIDE: Obama War Crime? – page 2; War Economy – page 3;
Hanrahan interviews Stieber, Curran, Hassan—page 4; IVAW De-
mands War Criminal Prosecution—page 6; Remember Fallujah—
page 7; Afghanistan—page 10; Cohn on Iraq—page 11; Endless
War?—page 12; Fager on the Spiritual Struggle Against War—page
14; WikiLeaks—page 18; Waterboarding—page 19; Ferner’s Take
on Obama’s Speech—page 21; An Iraq History Lesson—page 22
What You Will Not
Hear About Iraq by Adil E. Shamoo
Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent
unemployment, a dysfunctional parlia-
ment, rampant disease, an epidemic of
mental illness, and sprawling slums. The
killing of innocent people has become
part of daily life. What a havoc the
United States has wreaked in Iraq.
UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United
Nations, recently published a 218-page
report entitled State of the World’s Cit-
ies, 2010-2011. The report is full of sta-
tistics on the status of cities around the
(See YOU WILL NOT HEAR on page 9)
2 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
where Khadr was found and ultimately
seized in July 2002. The witness, iden-
tified as Sergeant Major D, was armed
with an N-4 Rifle and a Glock-9mm
pistol. The compound had just been
shot up by U.S. Apache helicopters and
bombarded by two 500-pound bombs.
After sensing a grenade and small arms
fire coming from an alleyway, he testi-
fied, D ran to the alley and shot dead a
man he saw with an AK-47 and a gre-
nade. Omar Khadr, meanwhile, was
seated on the ground in a dusty light-
blue tunic, his back to D. Khadr was
not armed, he wasn't holding or aiming
any sort of weapon, nor was he
threatening any U.S. service member
in any way. Yet Sergeant Major D
testified that he immedi-
ately shot him twice in
the back. He then walked
over and ―thumped him
in the eye‖ to see if he
was still alive. He was.
Targeting a civilian not
actively participating in
hostilities is normally a
war crime. Sergeant Ma-
jor D testified that he shot
Khadr because he viewed
him as a ―hostile‖ based
on his being in the com-
pound, which was permit-
ted by the military's rules of
engagement.
The laws of war should
doom the military commis-
sion prosecution of Omar
Khadr. And ultimately, for
the U.S. government, that's
not a bad thing. After all, if
its interpretation of the laws
of war were accurate, then
the armed civilian CIA
agent that accompanied
Special Forces on their July
2002 raid could be equally
guilty of murder in viola-
tion of the laws of war if he
killed any of the al Qaeda
members who died that day.
So could CIA operatives
operating remote-controlled
drones targeting al Qaeda
and Taliban leaders around
the world.
Charlie Savage reported
in the Times that the Obama
administration doesn't want
to put a stop to the case, such as
by pushing a plea bargain,
because it would be seen as
―improper interference.‖
But if the case is itself
Is the Obama Administration Guilty of a War Crime?
Contact: [email protected]
WCT Volunteer staff: Kim Carlyle,
Susan Carlyle, Mike Ferner, Clare Hanrahan,
Tarak Kauff, Lyle Petersen, Mark Runge,
and Nadya Williams
For subscriptions or bundle orders, contact:
Donations help cover printing and postage costs
of the many copies given away at public events.
Donate online at WarCrimesTimes.org or send a
check (memo "WCT") to:
WCT/VFP Chapter 099
PO Box 356
Mars Hill, NC 28754
by Daphne
Eviatar
On August 28,
the New York Times reported
tha t admini -
stra tion offi-
c i a l s a r e
―alarmed‖ by
t he mi l i t a r y
c o m m i s s i o n
case of Omar
Khadr, the Canadian citizen seized as a
15-year-old by U.S. forces in Afghani-
stan who's now spent a third of his life
in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo
Bay. Trying an alleged child soldier
based largely on confessions he
made after being threatened with
gang-rape and murder is not the
case the Obama administration had
hoped to showcase in its first mili-
tary commission trial.
But the argument in a new pa-
per published on August 31 by
Loyola Law School professor
David Glazier should give the ad-
ministration even more cause for
alarm. Glazier, an expert on inter-
national law and the laws of armed
conflict, argues that the military
commission trial of Omar Khadr is it-
self a war crime.
That's because Khadr is charged
with crimes that were only defined as
war crimes by the Military Commis-
sions Act, first enacted in 2006. Khadr
is charged with conspiracy and material
support for terrorism for helping his
father's friends make and plant impro-
vised explosive devices, and for
―murder in violation of the laws of
war‖ for throwing a grenade that killed
a U.S. soldier during a firefight started
by U.S. forces. All of these acts alleg-
edly occurred in the summer of 2002.
Back then, making bombs, planting
anti-tank mines, and killing the other
side's soldiers who were trying to kill
you first didn't violate any rules of war.
Because Khadr was not a ―privileged‖
belligerent entitled to the protections of
international law, he could be prose-
cuted in a criminal court in the United
States or Afghanistan. He is not, how-
ever, a war criminal.
Congress and the defense depart-
ment have tried to get around this fact.
In 2006 and again in 2009, Congress
unilaterally re-wrote international law
by defining conspiracy and material
support for terrorism—which encom-
passes pretty much anything an enemy
force or its supporters might do—as
war crimes. In commentary to the rules,
the Department of Defense further de-
fined ―murder in violation of the laws
of war‖ to include murder of a U.S.
soldier by an ―unprivileged belligerent‖
such as Khadr. But simply stating it
doesn't make it true.
Putting a suspect on trial for crimes
that did not exist when the acts were
committed is a violation of the U.S.
Constitution's prohibition on ex post
facto laws. It also violates several inter-
national treaties, including article 75 of
the Additional Geneva Protocol I of
1977, which says that ―no one shall be
accused or convicted of a criminal of-
fense on account of any act or omission
which did not constitute a criminal of-
fense under the national or international
law to which he was subject at the time
when it was committed...‖ The U.S. has
acknowledged that this accurately
states customary international law. Put-
ting Omar Khadr on trial in a military
commission for the acts of which he's
accused, then, according to Professor
Glazier, is itself a violation of the laws
of war and a ―grave breach‖ of the
Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions.
Such crimes can be prosecuted by other
countries under the principle of univer-
sal jurisdiction. In the United States
they're also federal felonies under the
War Crimes Act of 1996.
Setting aside the likelihood of any
other countries prosecuting the U.S. for
war crimes in this situation, it's odd
indeed that the Obama administration
would choose to pursue this case—
indeed, would make this its first war
crimes trial—in the Guantanamo Bay
military commissions.
There's another reason the U.S.
might not want to call attention to the
circumstances of this case. In August,
the government presented as a witness
a member of U.S. Special Forces who
described enter ing the compound
The War Crimes Times is a project of
Veterans For Peace
(www.VeteransForPeace.org)
a nonprofit, national organization of veterans
working together for peace and justice through
nonviolence.
War Crimes Times provides information on
war crimes and war criminals, the need to hold war
criminals accountable, the many costs of war, and
the effects of our war culture on our national
character. Our contributors include journalists,
legal experts, poets, artists, and veterans
speaking from experience. While their views
may not always be entirely consistent with the
mission of Veterans For Peace, their topics
address the concerns of War Crimes Times.
War Crimes Times is published quarterly by
VFP Chapter 099 (Western North Carolina).
We welcome submissions of original articles, poetry,
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Please submit by the 10th of the month that the issue
is printed: March, June, September, December.
―improper‖ or even illegal, then the
choice is to stop it now or see a convic-
tion reversed later by a court on appeal.
The latter choice might save the ad-
ministration some immediate embar-
rassment before the midterm elections;
but it will leave Omar Khadr cooped up
even longer in a military prison on fic-
titious crimes. And it will leave a far
more embarrassing legacy for the
United States to contend with in the
long run.
Daphne Eviatar is Senior Associate in Human Rights First’s Law and Security
Program. She investigates and reports on U.S. national security policies and practices and their human rights impli-
cations. The trial of Omar Khadr is itself
a war crime...he is charged with crimes that were only defined as
war crimes four years after he
was put in prison. This violates the U.S. Constitution and is a
―grave breach‖ of the Geneva
Conventions.
If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the
United States does them or whether Germany does them…
—Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 3
P l e n t y o f G u n s —
S e e n a n y B u t t e r ? by Michael T. McPhearson
Across the country people are hurting from the worst economic
downturn since the Great Depression. Our nation‘s economy teeters
on the brink of a double dip recession. Unemployment remains close
to ten percent with millions more who have simply given up search-
ing for a job, but are not officially counted as part of the unemploy-
ment rate. Cities and municipalities around the nation have lost tax
revenue forcing officials to close schools and parks, layoff workers,
and discontinue or reduce important, sometimes life-saving, services.
Cities are rapidly deteriorating as more and more businesses
close and homes are foreclosed. There is no one to take care of these
empty buildings, so they stand lifeless and begin to crumble. The
nation is in fiscal disorder as we continue to run record deficits and
an ever-growing debt. In an effort to curtail expenditures, the Presi-
dent has pledged to freeze spending for everything but the military
because national security is a top priority. But national security begins
at home and more and more people are feeling insecure every day.
Over 1 trillion dollars spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
is certainly not helping our domestic economic security. The money
seems to be at best partially, or at worst wholly, wasted on efforts to
continue foreign policy objectives that cannot be accomplished by
military force. A political solution is needed to bring stability to
Afghanistan, but is made less likely every time U.S. forces kill civil-
ians. Civilian deaths cause more anger and distrust leading to more
insurgents. Solutions in Iraq are in the hands of the Iraqis, but con-
tinued U.S. troop presence is a point of anger for key sections of the
population.
Vets Hang Banner on Abandoned
Hotel to Protest War Spending DETROIT, June 26—At 2pm, a group of U.S. military veterans hung a large ban-
ner on the abandoned Eddystone Hotel, on Sproat St., between Cass and Park, to
protest and reveal the effect of war spending on American cities. Members of Vet-
erans For Peace (VFP), attending the U.S. Social Forum, a gathering of over 8,000
activists from across the U.S., created and erected the 10 x 15-foot sign. Detroit
has an unemployment rate of 15 percent and 10,000 abandoned homes on the
mayor‘s demolition list.
Taxpayers in Detroit have sent a total of nearly two billion dollars to the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The city‘s 2011 general fund budget of 1.3 billion dollars
contains an estimated deficit of 300 million dollars, even after years of cutbacks in
services once assumed to be part of urban life. The budget for Detroit schools has
a deficit in the same range.
―Detroit, like so many of our cities, is in crisis,‖ said Mike Ferner, National Presi-
dent of VFP. "This crisis is no different than a five-alarm fire and we should re-
spond the same way. Instead, we watch America‘s cities literally crumble while
we pour thousands of lives and trillions of dollars into wars abroad.‖
John Amidon, President of VFP Chapter 10, added, ―It‘s absolutely criminal that
the people who built the U.S. auto industry have to watch their city collapse
around them while they send $2,000,000,000 to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is indeed the purest form of madness and it‘s coming to a city near you.‖
A strong economy, with long-term sustainable growth calls for fiscal responsibility and domes-
tic investment in human needs that will also result in new, sustainable jobs. We must spend money
to reorient our economy on a path of environmental sustainability, a healthy population, and global
competitiveness.
Military spending is the largest portion of the U.S. federal budget and nearly half the world‘s
total expenditure. In 2008, the world‘s total military spending was $1.47 trillion with the U.S. por-
tion at $711 billion or 48%. U.S. 2010 military budget is $719 billion with increases to $739 bil-
lion projected.
We cannot continue to allow military spending to dominate our budget and at the same time
invest in a bright future. Security and defense is essential. But a new foreign policy—much less
reliant on military bases and war, with cooperation and pursuit of solving global environmental
and human needs challenges at its center—is the only way to ensure global security and economic
growth.
Right now we have a war economy. How is it working for you?
Michael T. McPhearson is past executive director of Veterans For Peace.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
4 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
WCT Interview:
Iraq Vets, Iraqi Refugee, Join on Journey for Peace These are some excerpts, by selected topic, from an edited transcription of an interview aired on VFP-TV and Radio (Asheville, NC), produced by Veterans for Peace Chapter
099 in Western North Carolina. War Crimes Times contributing editor Clare Hanrahan conducted the interview which you can read in its entirety at WarCrimesTimes.org.
It’s hard to picture Josh Stieber and Conor Curran participating in the terrorism of military occupation. With their affable and thoughtful manner, and without the camou-
flage of combat uniforms or the lethal weapons they carried in Iraq, the two would pass easily as college students on any American campus. And their friend, Iraqi refugee Salam Hassan, certainly does not fit the stereotype of a terrorist so often used to stir up enmity against the people in his homeland.
Turning Against War
WCT: Josh, I read that there were some
orders you refused that kept you from
being on the ground during that mission
depicted in the WikiLeaks video. Did
you face harassment from your company
friends or the leaders in your platoon?
How about the commanders?
Stieber: My friends were actually de-
cently supportive. Yes, some other peo-
ple I didn‘t know as well gave me a hard
time. But I think it‘s important to realize
that a lot of that is based off of fear. It
just kind of gets hammered into people‘s
heads that if you‘re not ready to squeeze
the trigger when somebody says to, then
your life or your friends‘ lives might be
lost. A lot of times you do have to be
quick to respond. And I couldn‘t recon-
cile what we were doing, but people are
so fixed in the mindset that you just have
to do what you are told or you are put-
ting other people‘s lives at risk. So it is
definitely understandable that I was
viewed, at the very least, as a liability.
But the people I was able to sit down and
talk to more also felt a lot of the practices we
had not only didn‘t make sense but were
also in the long run making us less safe.
So the people who were actually willing
to talk with me about that were more
supportive. But the ones who didn‘t were
operating out of that fear mindset.
WCT: So they were willing to release
you after you refused orders. I thought
there were more serious
consequence for not fol-
lowing orders.
Stieber: No, it‘s sort of a
gradual thing. First I was a
gunner, and I refused some
orders, so I got shifted
over to being in charge of
the radios where they fig-
ured I‘d be less of a liabil-
ity. And then when I got
back from Iraq and it got
to the point again where I
said I can‘t keep doing
this. My initial plan was to
desert from the military,
and then I learned about
conscientious objection.
After a lot of personal de-
bate I decided to go that
route. You have to fill out
a lot of paper work and
answer a bunch of ques-
tions and get interviewed
by psychologists and chap-
lains and investigative of-
ficers and all these differ-
ent people and then it is all put in a
package and forwarded up the
ranks for final approval.
WCT: And did that require you say
you oppose all wars? So that some-
one who said that I oppose this par-
ticular war and the particular
crimes that are being perpetrated in this
war, that would not have been enough
for you to get a CO status and be re-
leased?
Stieber: Correct. I know there are some
people working on trying to make it so it
is specific wars. But now the policy is all
war.
WCT: Conor, your decision came after
you had fulfilled four years in the Marine
Corps. What kind of stress, or delayed
stress that we see in many soldiers—did
you have a period of that?
Curran: Definitely. I got out and was
diagnosed with PTSD. I wanted to push
myself away and distance myself as far
as I could from my previous life in the
Marine Corps. I did a lot of partying and
did that and tried to start building a nice
kind of American dream life. Doing that,
my thoughts were still based in a lot of
fear and anger and judgment, which they
had been before the war, and it led me into bad situations with substance abuse
and into war, and I still had these
thoughts going on, and now I had a lot of
added guilt from the war. So I started
just being basically forced into a lot of
processing and figuring out what was
going on with myself. Otherwise I‘m
sure I would have self-destructed. Doing
that I reflected upon a lot of experiences
that I had during the war and situations I
was encountering in my present life.
Religious Disconnect
WCT: …[Josh,] you were raised in a
mainstream, evangelical church—one of
those mega churches. Did you find when
you made your decision to go into the
military, were there any dissenting
voices in your church? Folks who said,
―Hey, wait a minute, think about this.‖
In terms of your Christianity…where
was the disconnect?
Stieber: There was one teacher in the
school who gave me a couple of articles
to look at to maybe raise a few questions.
But I didn‘t really even pay much con-
sideration to that. I was pretty convinced
that I was right, and a lot of other people
were really supportive of my decision to
enlist. And we were reading books in
school—the school I went to was part of
the church—with titles like, The Faith of
George W. Bush, and things like that. So,
yeah, I was very convinced that I was
doing the right thing and wasn‘t really
interested in hearing about any other
perspectives at the time.
Nationalism & Military Recruitment
WCT: …[Salam,] with your family still
[in Iraq], how is it you can come to sit
with us, and live in this country where
this war is perpetrated through our acqui-
escence?
Hassan: You know I should be smarter
than being drawn into Nationalism ideas.
Living across some line doesn‘t make
you with, or against. Actually, like the
Canadians live across the border, but if
somebody decided the line should cross
in their house, I don‘t think that half of
the family I should hate and half of the
family I should love because these are
Canadians and those are American.
WCT: So you‘re more of a global citizen?
Hassan: No. It‘s not about being a global citizen. It‘s about nationalism itself.
Somebody sitting in the government de-
cided that all Iraqis are our enemies…
and then anyone who lives on the line of
Iraq—whoever drew that line…That
doesn‘t make me your enemy. You don‘t
know me, I don‘t know you. And if we
could talk, if I like you, then we are
friends, and if I don‘t, then we are not.
That is a different idea than say, anyone
who holds this kind of paper or that kind
of paper…I should be smarter than that.
WCT: We all should be smarter than
that. Certainly, and we‘re not, because
for a large part we‘re all subjected to
propaganda...Josh,...after 9/11 when the World
Trade Towers were attacked...was that an
impetus for you to join the military?
Stieber: Definitely. I grew up right out-
side D.C. and after 9/11, went down with
my family and saw the big hole in the
Pentagon wall. Pretty much everyone I
trusted said if you want to keep things
like that from happening again, and if
you want to protect the people you care
about, then the best way to do that is to
go overseas and potentially kill people
there before they come here and get us.
And so, yeah, I definitely bought into
that paranoia.
WCT: And Conor, how did
you come to your decision?
Curran: Well, I came to that
by basically going to college
and doing a good bit of party-
ing and screwing up my life
pretty good and just running
out of all the resources I had,
to the point where I had no money for
college, or to live, basically. I kind of
ruined my chances in America and so I
started looking for another way out of
the situation I had and I didn‘t see many
choices left for me except to join the
military. I started looking at the situation
going on today and the war as something
that, well, hopefully, it will be a win-win
for me. I‘ll go in and get all these bene-
fits and turn my life around, and maybe
the war will bring Democracy to Iraq and
all these good things as well. So the mo-
tivating factors for me were personal, as
I think they were for so many other guys
that went in—whether to support fami-
lies with hard financial situations at
home, or get money for college—so
many people joined that way. I think
actual patriotism and idealism is there
and present in these individuals, but it is
a few notches down the list of reasons
they joined, as it was for me.
WCT: I don‘t know the situation of the
[Iraqi] military in Iraq.
Hassan: In Iraq the military is mandatory.
(See INTERVIEW on page 5)
Josh Stieber, 22,
who j o i ned t he
Army after gradua-
tion from a private
C h r i s t i a n h i g h
school in Laytons-
ville MD, was de-
ployed to Iraq in Feb-
ruary 2007. Assigned
to Bravo Company 2-
16, he worked as a
hu mvee dr i ve r ,
machine gunner,
detainee guard, and
radio operator. His unit was involved on the ground
in the mission depicted in the WikiLeaks video,
―Collateral Murder,‖ which revealed a July 2007
shooting of Iraqi civilians from a U.S. Army combat
helicopter. Stieber had earlier refused an order he
believed to be wrong and was not sent out on the
mission that day. After nearly a year of investigation
into the sincerity of his claim by the Army Consci-
entious Objection Review Board, he was released as
a Conscientious Objector in 2009.
A lot of the practices we had not only
didn‘t make sense but were also in
the long run making us less safe
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 5
And so everyone who comes to be 18
and is not in school, they have to go to
the military. Even if you go to school,
after you finish all your schooling you
will go to the military for a minimum of
a year and a half.
WCT: Are there serious consequences
for young men and women who may feel
they cannot, in conscience, join the mili-
tary?
Hassan: You will get executed.
Lessons from Another Culture
Curran: One experience that really
stuck with me during the war was an
instance where a man, whose house we
were raiding and [we] just basically de-
stroyed his yard and house, served us tea
while we were destroying this. When he
was serving us tea, there was no kind of
fear or anything in him. He was just
coming from a place of pure compassion.
That kind of planted a seed in me that
told me I don‘t have to always come at
things preparing for the worst-case sce-
nario and living in judgments of what I
am going to do in this situation or that,
or how to deal with certain people. He
showed me I could go into situations,
even hard ones filled with anger and hate, I
could go into these situations with love and
compassion and have amazing, trans-
forming effects from doing that. Looking
back on that experience and seeing what
kind of effect it had on me and trying to
practice that in my own life, gave that
idea a concrete foundation in my life that
acting with compassion and love does
have this amazing transforming power. I
started doing that and I started feeling
this freedom from the one path that I had
been taught I had to go down. I now had
two paths, and I had freedom. And I
started feeling a lot of joy and healing
from this path that this Iraqi man gave
me.
WCT: So that man had the courage,
(Continued from page 4)
faced by an armed group of people com-
ing into his home and doing damage, to
walk out among you and look you in the
eye. That would be quite transforming.
What bravery on his part.
WCT: Salam, what is it in that man?
How could he do that? Is that a particu-
lar quality you have seen in many people
in Iraq in the face of this occupation?
Hassan: I would think that it is the tra-
dition itself. For many thousands of
years in Iraq people are taught that com-
passion and hospitality can change a
mindset. …and when you appreciate
somebody‘s presence in your house, no
matter what they are doing, it can trans-
form the way they are thinking. I think
part of it is that this man, he didn‘t mean
to say, ―I‘m going to transform this guy
to make him nice,‖ but he was acting
from the way that he wanted to be, not
from what he wants others to be. You
can find that in Iraq very easy because
Iraq wasn‘t exposed to the Western
ideas…so there were no Western
thoughts of Individualism or greed, or
this is mine, or materialism.
WCT: So Josh, in your 14 months in
Iraq...Can you talk to me about any ex-
periences,
moments,
or people
y o u e n -
countered
that you
t h i n k
made this
worthwhile, worth your time.
Stieber: There were a lot of things, but
two that really stand out. One thing that
really impressed me, I had to stand guard
in a tower for multiple hours a day, it
was overlooking a highway, and a lot of
cars in Iraq are pretty old and it is pretty
frequent that they would break down.…
but standing there in the tower, almost
any time a car would break down there
would only be another car or two that
passed before someone swerved over to
try and help that person out.
The other big thing was the
joy of the children in Iraq.
We were in a pretty poor
part of town and we would
see these kids just playing
with trash all the time and
having fun jumping over
sewerage trenches. I just
thought back to how I grew
up and had all these differ-
ent toys and grew so bored of
them and don‘t remember hav-
ing so much fun as these kids
did just playing with trash.
It helped redirect me to-
ward embracing simplicity,
and realizing you don‘t
need anything fancy or ex-
pensive to find joy, that a
lot of times it is in the sim-
ple things and who you are
spending time with.
Sanctions
WCT: [Salam,] during the
period you were growing
up…. you would have
struggled through the sanc-
tions that were imposed that…
took the culture down from a
thriving country of highly
literate, cultured people
and robbed them of the
wherewithal for basic liv-
ing. Is that correct?
Hassan: It came to the
point that people couldn‘t
even afford basic food—no
matter how many people
were working in the house.
…It destroyed the eco-
nomic situation of the fam-
ily. So when the war started 13 years
after the sanctions started, that devas-
tated the country. The salary of the sol-
dier was $5 a month, and it cost, say $2
for a sandwich.
WCT: Very difficult to survive. Were
people able to leave?
Hassan: There were people who made it
to Jordan. That is the only country that
was open
to an Iraqi
pa ss por t .
And s t i l l
today there
a r e o n l y
two coun-
tr ies that
wi l l give
you a visa to get in.… It‘s not easy just
to go….
WikiLeaks Video / Military Culture
WCT: So Josh, you were talking about
the video that was leaked on WikiLeaks
and I understand you said that these sol-
diers there were doing exactly what they
were trained to do. They were respond-
ing in these circumstances in ways they
were systematically trained to do, as you
both were trained to, as you said, ―Pull
that trigger without thinking.‖ I wonder
in your training, also, did any of it in-
clude conversations about the Nurem-
berg principles and the duty to refuse
illegal orders? Was that part of your
training how one would go about doing
that? I would think it would be difficult
to discern in the spur of the moment
what moral, ethical and legal realities
there are when you are in the heat of bat-
tle. Did you get grounding in Nuremberg?
Stieber: Not that I can remember. I
would say that the training went to kind
of a blurred line between what is morally
responsible and what is not. I think the
goal is to just be quick to listen to what-
ever you are told and the biggest wrong
thing you can do is to ask questions.
Every once in a while it might get paid
lip service, yeah, you don‘t accept an
illegal order, but for the most part, even
through training, the lines would get
blurred whether it was watching videos
of bombs being dropped on Middle Eastern
villages, or people being shot and sing-
ing rock and roll music to it, or scream-
ing lines like ―Kill them all and let God
sort them out.‖ I‘d say the training was
not things like the Nuremberg principles
or the Geneva conventions. It was of
getting you used to having that line
blurred and used to just responding to
what you were told.
Currran: In the Marines we mentioned
it, even in boot camp, a little bit. But
almost every time that was brought up
we would be going through the legalisms
for our service and it would always get
mentioned with the Military Code of
Justice…and instantly get the reminder
that there are two articles in the Code of
Justice saying you can be court-martialed
for disobeying an order from a senior
non-commissioned officer, and an article
for disobeying a commissioned officer. It
was very clear that if we wanted to ques-
tion these things, and the question we
brought up wasn‘t completely legitimate
and well thought out, we would be taken
down for it. And I think this instilled this
level of fear that just led to non-
questioning. I know, after our time in
Iraq, and in training they are now insti-
tuting, things such as [Iraqis] talking on
cell phones or taking pictures were
sometimes followed by IED attacks, and
they were part of roadside bombing at-
tacks and so even the normal parts of our
everyday life, that we take for granted
here, became reason for orders to be is-
sued to kill people, often times innocent
people. But among the level of the
troops, these questionable things for the
rest of us, they saw enough of a reason to
fear the actions of normal day life for the
Iraqi people, so that the questions that
should have been brought up weren‘t.
There were enough terrible incidents
happening that people were afraid of
these incidents, or they were afraid to be
wrong about something and of being
court-martialed.
Support Our Troops?
WCT: What can the peace movement do
to make it easier and to support these
soldiers who may be struggling with (See INTERVIEW on page 6)
Conor Curran, 26, of
Per rysbur g, Ohi o,
served two tours in
Iraq as a U.S. Marine.
He enlisted after run-
ning out of money
before he could finish
college. He reached
the rank of Sergeant,
and was discharged
after four years. His
first tour was spent as
part of a team clearing
roadside bombs be-
tween Fallujah and Ramadi. In the next deployment,
he was attached to an infantry company working out
of Ramadi. Curran met Stieber when he came
through Ohio on a cross-country bicycle tour and
stayed with the Curran family. The two veterans
teamed up to complete Stieber‘s ―Contagious Love
Experiment‖ tour, and then travelled together on the
Journey For Peace.
Salam Talib Hassan,
a computer specialist,
journalist, photogra-
pher and translator, has
written extensively
about the situation on
the ground in Iraq.
Hassan survived the
U.S.-U.N. sanctions
and the U.S. occupa-
tion that is devastating
Iraq. Childhood polio
exempted him from
compulsory military
service. Hassan hosted Stieber and Curran at his
Berkeley home during their California stay. The
three soon became fast friends, and Hassan joined
the tour which brought them to Asheville.
...a man served us tea while we were
destroying his house..he was coming
from a place of pure compassion...
Interview
6 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
At its seventh annual na-
tional convention in Austin,
Texas, Iraq VeteransAgainst
the War called for the prosecu-
tion of senior Bush administra-
tion officials for allegedly con-
spiring to manipulate intelli-
gence in order to justify the
U.S. invasion of Iraq.
IVAW alleges that Bush
administration officials con-
spired to create the perception
that Saddam Hussein pre-
sented an imminent threat to
the United States in order to
bypass an uncooperative U.N.
Security Council and secure a
congressional Authorization
for Use of Military Force
against Iraq. The growing
body of evidence, including
testimony from British offi-
cials in the ongoing Chilcot
Inquiry, indicates that Bush
officials could be charged with
criminal offenses against the
United States and violations of
international law for making
false claims to national self-
defense.
Article 1, Section 8 of the
U.S. Constitution vests the
power to authorize use of mili-
Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Demand Prosecution of Bush War Criminals
these questions?
Curran: I think that so many soldiers and military
personnel over there quickly lose their idealism about
war—but no other option and no way out. So just be-
ing able to explain their basic rights to them—like
Josh and I had no idea what conscientious objector
status was for the majority of our time in the service.
Just being able to communicate simple ideas like that
can make a world of difference to someone struggling
with ideas like, ―Hey, what I‘m seeing going on here
isn‘t right, but it‘s the only path, right?‖
WCT: How might we get information like that into
the hands of these soldiers who right now might be
struggling?
Curran: There are huge organizations that send care
packages out to the soldiers in Iraq all the time, saying
like ―Thank you for your service and here‘s some
candy, and keep doing the hard fight.‖ What if peace
(INTERVIEW from page 5) groups starting doing the same support outreach that
so many more fundamentalist churches are doing.
They support the troops with huge amounts of care
packages and literature.
What if peace groups started doing that—saying, hey,
I appreciate the sacrifice you are willing to make to
make the world a better place. But here is some litera-
ture. Look at these different paths you can take. There
are nonviolent ways to do these things. And here are
some candy bars to eat while thinking it over.
It’s the System
WCT: [Salam,] you‘ve said, rather than taking our
judgment out on those individual soldiers, we need to
hold the entire system accountable…What are some
ideas?
Hassan: From an outsider view, I think we have to
reduce the amount of violence in the family itself first.
What happens for someone like Conor or Josh, from
the age of 18 they think that to be tough or to be vio-
lent, it is the cool thing to do, and you can‘t be not
violent or hard on yourself or others. That is the hero
thing to do. I think that starts from childhood, in the
movies, in the cartoon, in every single aspect of life
here. Instead of giving them a toy to be peaceful to
play with, they give them a gun to play with, and paint
balls. The aspect of the whole society is built some-
how on the idea that violent people are the heroes. So I
think that‘s a good start for us to hold the system ac-
countable by fighting back the system. The Military is
exactly a company; they want to promote those ideas,
which are violent, and how to use a gun. If you asked
any child in the U.S. what an M-16 was, he would
know what an M-16 was because he learned it from
the games, the video games...
Stieber: …Not only the video games and media…but the
way we were educated. I remember in high school learning
(See INTERVIEW on page 8)
Resolution in Support of the Prosecution
of Senior Bush Administration Officials for War Crimes
Alleging the Bush administration's premeditated manipulation of intelligence to jus-
tify the invasion of Iraq;
Understanding that the manufactured public perception of an imminent threat to the United States led to military action that would otherwise have been considered illegal
under constitutional and international law;
Affirming that Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution vests the power to authorize hostilities in the Legislative branch, not the Executive, and recognizing that in order to do so responsibly the former must be provided accurate and objective intelli-
gence;
Acknowledging the tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths that have
resulted from the U.S. invasion of Iraq;
Alleging the Bush administration's illegal authorization of torture and coercive inter-
rogation against detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Alleging the Bush administration’s self-interested alterations to Iraqi economic, fi-nancial and other laws as illegal under international law, which the United States as
occupying power is bound to adhere to;
Alleging the Bush administration's support of U.S. oil companies' efforts to gain con-
trol over Iraqi oil fields while the country remained under military occupation;
Understanding how these alleged acts fueled the insurgency and resulted in in-
creased casualties on all sides;
Recognizing further how these alleged acts contributed to terrorist recruitment into
Al Qaeda, to the detriment of the security of American citizens;
Interpreting the U.S. Attorney General's declination to prosecute former Bush ad-ministration officials for these alleged crimes as due to a lack of political resolve stem-
ming from insufficient sustained public pressure;
Understanding that prosecution of these officials is vital and necessary in order to prevent future, more egregious violations of the Constitution and international law,
which Bush administration officials allegedly subverted;
IVAW hereby declares its support for the prosecution of senior Bush administration officials as a matter of justice, accountability, and the rule of law.
tary force in
the Legisla-
tive Branch,
not the Ex-
ecutive. In
order to do
so responsi-
bly the Con-
gress must
be provided
wi th accu-
rate and ob-
jective intel-
l i g e n c e .
B us h of f i -
cials‘ alleged
distortion of
the intel li-
gence p ic-
ture created a climate of fear
and uncertainty in which the
constitutional power of Con-
gress was subverted.
IVAW further alleges that
the Bush administration‘s al-
terations to Iraqi laws were
made for the intended benefit
of U.S. multinational corpora-
tions and are illegal under in-
ternational law. Efforts to
pressure Iraqi officials to open
up the country‘s oil industry to
foreign investment exacer-
bated the insurgency and un-
dermined the U.S. military‘s
ostensible mission there.
IVAW finally asserts that
senior Bush officials are re-
sponsible for the illegal treat-
ment of Iraqi and Afghan offi-
cials in U.S. custody and that
this treatment was detrimental
to the security of American
citizens.
Tens and perhaps hundreds
of thousands of deaths have
resulted from the Bush ad-
ministration‘s disastrous inva-
sion and occupation of Iraq.
Millions of Iraqis have been
internally displaced and hun-
dreds of thousands are forced
to subsist as r efugees in
neighboring countries. Thou-
sands of American men and
women have lost their lives
and tens of thousands suffer
from wounds sustained while
fighting there. Families and
communities across the United
States are now suffering from
veteran suicides, homeless-
ness, substance abuse and do-
mestic violence. The long-
term cost of this war, includ-
ing the provision of VA sup-
port for our returning veterans,
is estimated to run into the
trillions.
It is time for America to
hold the officials responsible
for this war to account for
their decisions. On behalf of
the Iraqis and Americans who
have sacrificed everything to
restore stability to Iraq, IVAW
calls for justice.
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 7
Remember Fallujah? by Ross Caputi
On the eve that the air assault ended and Operation
Phantom Fury (the 2nd siege of Fallujah) began, I
found myself sitting in a fighting hole about a klick
outside of Fallujah. My unit sat there anxiously watch-
ing what looked like a fireworks show, as the flashes
of everything from 500-pound bombs to 2,000-pound
bombs lit Fallujah up like the 4th of July.
At a certain point I saw a spark, and then a cluster
of glowing white balls slowly descending in the direc-
tion of Fallujah. It was white phosphorous, which I
knew could easily melt through an engine block, and
as I watched it drifting in the wind I wondered how we
could be using such an inaccurate and deadly weapon.
I asked the lieutenant closest to me if this was legal,
and he replied to me that it was because we were using
it as a smoke screen rather than using it offensively.
I had stopped believing what my chain of com-
mand told me long before that night, but I convinced
myself that I had no choice but to finish my deploy-
ment. I told myself that I had only made one mistake,
and that was joining the Marine Corps. Everything that
happened from the day that I arrived
at boot camp until the moment I
found myself in a fighting hole sit-
ting outside of Fallujah was not my
fault, and that I was a victim of cir-
cumstance. But none of that was
true, and I am only able to recognize
now, six years later, that everyday
that I laced my boots up I made a
choice. I chose to participate in what
I knew in my gut to be wrong, rather
than choosing not to participate.
There were consequences with either
choice, but they were choices, and
there was only one choice that would
have allowed me to leave Iraq with-
out blood on my hands.
My unit was inserted into the center of Fallujah
almost a day later at roughly 0400 hours. I was part of
Headquarters Platoon because my chain of command
hated my unenthusiastic attitude, and they wanted me
to be around authority at all times. I became the Cap-
tain‘s radio operator, or rather his mule that carried
heavy things for him.
As soon as we stepped off the tracks, the other platoons
quickly cleared the
police station and the
mayor‘s complex, and
then Headqua r ter s
Platoon moved to the
roof of the police sta-
tion to make radio
transmissions. I put up
our antenna and then
passed the headset to
the Captain. The po-
lice station was tall
enough that we could
see all of Fallujah.
The horizon was just
beginning to turn or-
ange, and the city was dimly lit, silent, and eerie. Tan,
square houses stretched as far as we could see in all
directions, with innumerable minarets poking up out of
the dense neighborhoods and pointing to the sky. Fal-
lujah‘s big blue domed mosque sat only a couple hun-
dred meters away.
The Captain coordinated with different platoons
and squads around our position over the radio, until
the sun poked its head over the horizon and Morning
Prayer sounded over the loud speakers across the city.
As soon as the prayer ended gunfire rang out in the
distance, and it continued and intensified throughout
the day.
Headquarters Platoon moved to the roof of the
mayors complex where we quickly found ourselves
pinned down by sniper
and rocket fire. Within a
few hours we took our
first casualty; Lieuten-
ant Malcolm was hit by
sniper fire. Gunnery
Sergeant Ramos sud-
denly appeared on the
scene. Gunnery Ser-
geant Ramos hated me
more than any of my
other higher-ups, and as
soon as he saw me he
or de r e d me t o r u n
across an open field,
through sniper fire, to
get a box of chow. Two
weeks later he said to
me, ―Hey boy, how did
you like it when I made
you run for your life to
get that box of chow?
Maybe that will give you some incentive to start doing
what you‘re told.‖
Rockets and machine gunfire continued throughout
the day, and some of the guys in my unit finally got
something that they had been taught since boot camp
that they should want—a kill.
Around noontime we saw our first group of
civilians trying to cross the street with a
white flag. We had been told that all civil-
ians had left the city, and when we lifted our
heads to look at them, sniper fire began to
crack over our heads. Everyone around me
immediately jumped to the conclusion that
the civilians were working with the insur-
gents, helping to draw us out from behind
our cover. The gunfire continued until the
sun went down and Evening Prayer
sounded, after which there was total silence.
The first day of the siege was over, and the
stage was set for what was to come. The
guys in my unit, the low men on the totem
pole, were tired, frustrated, lied to, and afraid (whether
they admitted it or not). Plus, a new element had been
added to the equation—killing.
Some of us believed there were no civilians left in
the city, and some of us believed that the civilians
were aiding the insurgents. Our higher-ups told us that
over 2,000 hardcore insurgents of Zarqawi‘s army had
chosen to stay in the city and fight, that we were all
going to make history, and they made it perfectly clear
that dissent would not be tolerated. It was a recipe for
disaster, and some might correctly call it an atrocity-
producing situation, because that is exactly what hap-
pened next.
For the next two weeks we went house-to-house
searching for bad guys. As soon as Morning Prayer
would finish the gunfire would begin, and it did not
stop until Evening Prayer finished. I watched good
people in my unit become sick in a matter of days. The
violence twisted our minds and became a self-fueling
fire in itself. Looting became commonplace, and some
of us even rifled through the pockets of dead resistance
fighters hoping to find cash. A handful of us went
around mutilating the bodies of the dead resistance
fighters. One guy slit a puppy‘s throat because he
could not stand its crying. At a certain point a friend
came running up to me with a smile on his face,
―Caputi, I finally shot someone!‖ he said to me.
The sudden onset of violence affected everyone, even
all the way up the chain of command. They were
(See FALLUJAH on page 8)
The guys in my unit were tired, frustrated, lied to, and
afraid...
Our higher-ups made it perfectly clear that dissent
would not be tolerated.
It was a recipe for disaster, and some might correctly
call it an atrocity-producing situation, because that is exactly what happened next.
8 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
aware that all this was happening, but they let it con-
tinue. We began using tactics like bulldozing houses,
and ―reconnaissance by fire.‖
Reconnaissance by fire is when you fire into a
house to see if people are inside. If you hear silence
after firing, then there is nobody in the house, at least
nobody that is alive. If you hear moaning or shouting
then there might be resistance fighters in the house, or
there might be civilians. At one point we came to a
house with two resistance fighters and a little boy in-
side. I have no idea if there were any attempts made to
negotiate or to save that boy‘s life in some way, but I
watched as we shot grenades into that house until the
roof crumbled down on all three of them.
Without even seeing it coming, I joined the long
legacy of American soldiers and Marines who unwit-
tingly helped kill innocents to build an empire.
For years I tried to forget Fallujah, and I stopped
watching the news and reading the newspaper. When I
could no longer stand the people in my home town
thanking me for my ―service‖ and treating me like a
king for the ―sacrifice‖ that I made, I packed my bags
and moved to Italy. But without realizing it I was join-
ing another long standing legacy; this one of soldiers
and Marines who committed atrocities and then let the
truth slip down the memory hole.
As much as I tried I could never completely put
Fallujah out of my mind. It was always there prevent-
ing me from looking people in the eye. Years passed,
and I eventually gave up and admitted to myself that
Fallujah would always be the skeleton in my closet. It
would never go away and I could not hide from it. And
I was exactly right. Fallujah had not gone away, and it
remains one of the most miserable places on this planet.
It was years after the siege when I first learned
about the estimated number of civilians killed in the
siege (I have heard numbers from 500 to 1,000 de-
pending on the source) and about the number of refu-
gees that the siege created (over 200,000). Only re-
cently have I learned about the health crisis that we
caused.
Since the sieges in 2004, Fallujah has seen a spike
in infant mortality rates, birth defects, and cancer.
Children are being born horribly deformed, or with
missing limbs, or mentally retarded, or with scaly skin.
There has been one case of a child born with three
heads, and another of a child born with one eye in the
center of his forehead. The leading research is pointing
to depleted uranium weapons as the cause.
It is not easy but today I can admit that I am com-
plicit in all of this, even if I never pulled the trigger.
Everyday that I chose to ignore that feeling in my gut
telling me that we were doing something wrong, I was
complicit. And every day after I got out of the Marine
Corps and remained silent, I was complicit. I cannot
go on making the same mistakes that I made in the
past, and only think about what is good for me. That is
why I helped form the Justice for Fallujah Project, and
that is why we are organizing the first annual Remem-
ber Fallujah Week this year.
Although Americans may choose to forget Fallu-
jah, the rest of the world will not. Fallujah will remain
a symbol of occupation and cruelty, and unless we
confront it, it will disappear down the memory hole,
and the next generation of Americans will never un-
derstand what the rest of the world is so angry about.
Ross Caputi, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War (2003-2006), is President of Boston University Anti-
War Coalition. Learn more at thefallujahproject.org.
(Continued from page 7)
the problem. So we need people to relate to this idea to
separate themselves from the government as much as
possible and try to approach Iraq saying, look, there is
a government, and there are the people. Iraqis are so
qualified to know that, because they had Saddam for
so long. They know that the government is one thing,
and they are something else. They can relate to many
people like that. Even though the American govern-
ment sounds so democratic from the outside—they do
what people want to happen—but people inside Amer-
ica know that is not true. If we can just break this
propaganda, that will help a lot in breaking this cycle
of hate.…I see these two
soldiers, I know their cir-
cumstances. The best way
to judge anything is to put
yourself in the place of the
other person. If I was raised
in America, and I had my
family and everyone saying,
go defend your country and
go kill everyone, I would
hold the gun and go kill
people. But when I get to a certain age…with a full
knowledge and conscious position, and I still do that,
then I should be held accountable.
Stieber: The three of us are traveling to try and build
on this idea that we are people no matter where we
have come from. We need to stop listening to our lead-
ers who tell us who we are supposed to hate, and say,
―No!‘ We are all people and we probably have more in
common with the people we are told to hate than with
the people who are telling us to hate. On our tour we
will be joined by some children from Gaza and in our
speaking events we connect through Skype to children
in Afghanistan to try to show that people are peo-
ple.To quote a bumper sticker, ―What if they threw a
war and nobody came?‖ We hope that by including all
these voices and showing our common humanity, that
the next time they say who to hate, we will say, ―No!‖
We‘ve been told to hate people in the past, and we‘ve seen the mistake in that, and we will be less likely to
do that in the future.
Clare Hanrahan is a member of VFP Chapter 099, a mem-
ber of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Com-
mittee, and an organizer with War Resisters League Asheville.
about things like the atomic bomb, and learning how,
at the very worst, it was strategically debatable, but
never that it was morally wrong or anything along
those lines. So when things come out like the
WikiLeaks video or instances where civilians are be-
ing killed—and it‘s in the headlines, if you look close
enough. I think that reaction, through how we study
history, of saying all these people got hurt using the
atomic bomb, but it was justi-
fied, it slowly gets ingrained.
So that you can say, there are
cases where it‘s acceptable to
do that kind of thing. Another
thing, if people really want to
change things, is really to push
for peace education in the
schools. The three of us have
all spent some time visiting
high schools and say, if we
want to start handling problems
differently we need to change the way we educate our
young people.
Final Thoughts
WCT: Salam, you have said that we are not natural
enemies and that in different circumstances we would
be friends. And we see that right here today. How can
we make amends to the Iraqi people?
Hassan: When you say Iraqis, it just means the na-
tionalism again, and American means nationalism
again. I personally think they are both just humans.
They relate very easy. It‘s not Quantum physics or
anything. You just put those people together and have
a cup of tea, and they will be just fine. There are
grudges that are being built by the system makers.
They put them next to each other and they say, you
hold the gun—and the other one is shot. The environ-
ment that is being created is not a friendly environ-ment for dating. It is an environment for killing. I
think that as soon as we can stop that approach—one
is the victim and one is the killer—we will get closer
to this idea that a cup of tea will solve the problem.
But twenty years from now, a cup of tea will not solve
(Continued from page 6)
Interview
Fallujah
We are all people and we
probably have more in common
with the people we are told to hate than with the people who
are telling us to hate.
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 9
creating a lifetime of suffering
and economic hardship for
them, their communities and the
entire nation as it struggles to
rebuild. Life expectancy for
Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996
to 67 years in 2007 due to the
war and destruction of the
healthcare system. The U.S. use
of weapons such as depleted
uranium and white phosphorous
has taken a severe toll, with the
cancer rate in Fallujah, for ex-
ample, now worse than that of
Hiroshima.
* The majority of the
refugees and internally
displaced persons created
by the U.S. intervention
have been abandoned. Of
the nearly 4 million refugees,
many are now living in increas-
ingly desperate circumstances in
Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and
around the world. As undocu-
mented refugees, most are not
allowed to work and are forced
to take extremely low paying,
illegal jobs ($3/day) or rely on
the UN and charity to survive.
(Continued from page 1)
The United Nations refugee
agency (UNHCR) has docu-
mented a spike in the sex traf-
ficking of Iraqi women.
* Iraq still does not have
a functioning government. Many months after the March 7 elec-
tions, there is still a political vac-
uum and violence that is killing
roughly 300 civilians a month.
There is no functioning democ-
racy in place and little sign there
will be one in the near future.
* The Iraq War has left
a terrible toll on the U.S.
troops. More than one million
American service members have
been deployed in the Iraq War
effort. Over 4,400 U.S. troops have
been killed and tens of thousands
severely injured. More than one
in four U.S. troops have come
home from the Iraq war with
health problems that require
medical or mental health treat-
ment. PTSD rates in the military
have skyrocketed. In 2009, a
record number of 245 soldiers
committed suicide.
* The war has drained
our treasury. As of August 2010,
U.S. taxpayers have spent over
$750 billion on the Iraq War
effort. Counting the cost of life-
time care of wounded vets and
the interest payments on the
money we borrowed to pay for
this war, the real cost will be in
the trillions. This misappropria-
tion of funds has contributed to
the economic crises we are ex-
periencing, including the lack of
funds for our schools, health-
care, infrastructure and invest-
ments in clean, green jobs.
* The U.S. officials who
got us into this disastrous
war on the basis of lies
have not been held ac-
countable. Not George Bush,
Dick Cheney, Condoleezza
Rice, Colin Powell, Karl Rove,
Donald Rumsfeld. No one. Nei-
ther have the Bush administra-
tion lawyers who authorized
torture, including Jay Bybee and
John Yoo. The ―think tanks,‖
journalists, and pundits who
perpetuated the lies have not
been fired—most are today
cheerleading for the war in Af-
ghanistan.
* The war has led to the
pi l lag ing o f Iraqi re-
sources. The U.S. Department
of Defense has been unable to
The Coalition: * Veterans For Peace * Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice * CODEPINK: Women for Peace * Community Organizing Center
* Courage to Resist * Fellowship of Reconciliation * Global Exchange * Institute for Policy Studies' New Internationalism Project * Iraq Veterans Against the War
* Jeannette Rankin Peace Center * Just Foreign Policy * Mid-Missouri Peaceworks * Military Families Speak Out * Pax Christi - USA * Under the Hood
* U.S. Labor Against the War * Voices for Creative Nonviolence * Voters for Peace * War Is a Crime
account for $8.7 billion of Iraqi
oil and gas money meant for
humanitarian needs and recon-
struction after the 2003 inva-
sion. The invasion has also led
to the dismantling of Iraqi gov-
ernment control over the nation‘s
oil. In 2001, Vice President Dick
Cheney‘s energy task force, which
included executives of Amer-
ica‘s largest energy companies,
recommended opening up areas
of their energy sectors to foreign
investment. The resulting Iraq
Oil Law has led to the global
grab for Iraq‘s resources.
* The war has not made
us more secure. The U.S.
policy of torture, extraordinary
rendition, indefinite detention,
violent and deadly raids on ci-
vilian homes, gunning down
innocent civilians in the streets,
and absence of habeas corpus
has fueled the fires of hatred and
extremism toward Americans.
The very presence of our troops
in Iraq and other Muslim nations
has become a recruiting tool.
Given the above, we, the under-
signed individuals and organiza-
tions, mark the occasion of this
partial troop withdrawal by call-
ing on the Administration and
Congress to take the following
actions:
* Withdrawal of all U.S.
troops and military contrac-
tors from Iraq and the clos-
ing of all U.S. bases;
* Reparations to help the
Iraqis repair their basic in-
frastructure and increased
funds for the millions of in-
ternally and externally dis-
placed Iraqis;
* Full support for the U.S.
troops who suffer from the
i n t e r na l a nd e x t e r na l
wounds of war;
* Prosecution of those offi-
cials responsible for drag-
ging our country into this
disaster;
* Transfer of funds from
war into resources to rebuild
America, with a focus on
green jobs.
* The lessons of this disas-
trous intervention should
also be an impetus for Con-
gress and the administration
to end the war in Afghani-
stan. It’s time to focus on
creating real security here at
home and rebuilding America.
Iraq Debacle
world and their demographics. It defines slum
dwellers as those living in urban centers without
one of the following: durable structures to protect
them from climate, sufficient living area, sufficient
access to water, access to sanitation facilities, and
freedom from eviction.
Almost intentionally hidden in these statistics is
one shocking fact about urban Iraqi populations.
For the past few decades, prior to the U.S. invasion
of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban popula-
tion living in slums in Iraq hovered just below 20
percent. Today, that percentage has risen to 53 percent: 11
million of the 19 million total urban dwellers. In the past
decade, most countries have made progress toward
reducing slum dwellers. But Iraq has gone rapidly
and dangerously in the opposite direction.
According to the U.S. Census of 2000, 80 per-
cent of the 285 million people living in the United
States are urban dwellers. Those living in slums are
well below 5 percent. If we translate the Iraqi statis-
tic into the U.S. context, 121 million people in the
United States would be living in slums.
If the United States had an unemployment rate
of 25-50 percent and 121 million people living in
slums, riots would ensue, the military would take
over, and democracy would evaporate. So why are people in the United States not concerned and sad-
dened by the conditions in Iraq? Because most peo-
ple in the United States do not know what happened
in Iraq and what is happening there now. Our gov-
ernment, including the current administration, looks
YOU WILL NOT HEAR (Continued from page 1)
the other way and perpetuates the myth that
life has improved in post-invasion Iraq. Our
major news media reinforce this message.
I had high hopes that the new admini-
stration would tell the truth to its citizens
about why we invaded Iraq and what we are
doing currently in the country. President
Obama promised to move forward and not
look to the past. However problematic this
refusal to examine the past—particularly
for historians—the president should at least
inform the U.S. public of the current condi-
tions in Iraq. How else can we expect our
government to formulate appropriate pol-
icy?
More extensive congressional hearings
on Iraq might have allowed us to learn
about the myths propagated about Iraq prior
to the invasion and the extent of the damage
and destruction our invasion brought on
Iraq. We would have learned about the tre-
mendous increase in urban poverty and the
expansion of city slums. Such facts about
the current conditions of Iraq would help
U.S. citizens to better understand the im-
pact of the quick U.S. withdraw and what
are our moral responsibilities in Iraq should
be.
Adil E. Shamoo is a senior analyst at For-eign Policy In Focus, and a professor at the
University of Maryland School of Medicine.
He writes on ethics and public policy.
10 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
Khadr was captured after a four-hour
firefight between American forces and so-
called militants in the village of Ayub Kheyl
near Kabul, during which the Afghans'
homes were flattened by 500-pound bombs.
One American died later from wounds in-
flicted by a grenade. Reports conflict, but
Khadr was shot several times in the chest
and back, then later was found under the
rubb l e , uncons ci ous a nd s er i ous l y
wounded—he lost an eye from shrapnel.
Taken to Bagram Airbase, where the U.S.
government maintains a prison, Khadr re-
ceived some medical treatment and was in-
terrogated about his role that day.
He was thought to have information
about al-Qaeda, since his father was a ji-
hadist and knew Osama bin Laden. Khadr
says he was denied pain killers, subjected to
what can only be called torture, and forced
to do hard work, aggravating his wounds.
It was only after this torture that he said
he had helped the militants because Amer-
ica was at war with Islam. Despite Canada's
request, Khadr was transferred to the prison
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was
again tortured and kept in solitary confine-
ment for long spells.
He claims that because of the torture he
gave false confessions, including that he
threw a grenade.
Thanks to WikiLeaks and heroic
leakers inside the military, we now know
the U.S. government has killed many
more innocent Afghan civilians than we
were aware of heretofore. We also know
that American military and intelligence
personnel roam Afghanistan assassinat-
ing suspected bad guys. Sometimes they
kill people they later acknowledge were-
n't bad guys at all.
"Bad guys," like "Taliban," is implic-
itly defined as anyone who resists the
U.S. occupation force and the corrupt
puppet government it keeps in power.
What other atrocities are our
misleaders and misrepresentatives
committing in our name?
Let's get something straight: to
be an enemy of American occupa-
tion, bombing, and "nation building" is
not the same thing as being an en-
emy of America or its people. It's
time Americans understood that.
When you invade another
country and people there object, even
forcibly, they are not aggressors. You
are. To understand this, imagine our be-
ing invaded by a foreign military force.
Would resistance be aggression?
The U.S. government goes to appall-
ing lengths to deny this truth. It is about
to try before a military commission a
young Canadian, Omar Ahmed Khadr,
who was taken into custody in Afghani-
stan eight years ago when he was 15
years old. The charge? War crimes,
among them "murder in violation of the
rules of war," which lawyer Chase Madar
calls "a newly minted war crime novel to
the history of armed conflict."
Afghanistan: a U.S view by Sheldon Richman
When you invade another
country and people there
object, even forcibly, they
are not aggressors. You are.
Later he said he had no recollec-
tion of throwing a grenade and was in
fact rendered unconscious by an
American-caused explosion.
Unfortunately, the presiding judge has
refused to exclude Khadr's statements
made under torture and other cruel
treatment, such as threats of gang
rape. Militarily commissions are as much
the travesty of justice that candidate
Obama said they were in 2008. But
now he's in charge.
Even if Khadr threw the grenade
and killed an American, how can that
be a war crime? At worst his actions
look like self-defense but at any rate,
fighters in combat aren't typically
charged with murder.
Is the American military to be per-
mitted to go anywhere the politicians
wish and expect the people of the in-
vaded countries meekly to accept
their fate and pledge allegiance to the
United States? Would we receive an
invader that way?
The U.S. government and its well-
paid military contractors have an
agenda in the Middle East and South
Central Asia that has nothing to do with
the welfare or safety of average Ameri-
cans.
On the contrary, it is bankrupting
them and has made them targets of re-
venge. There's a simple way to keep
American military personnel safe: bring
them home.
Obama has shown himself to be
worse than his predecessor and the neo-
conservative empire enthusiasts. His
promises to leave Iraq and Afghanistan
are hedged so thick that we can expect
the occupations to continue for many
years ... all in our name. Despite
Obama's words, the death and destruc-
tion at America's hands are not nearing
an end.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation
(www.fff.org) and editor of The Free-
man magazine.
by Paul Woodward
A missile strike on December 17 in Yemen last
year that killed 41 people including 21 children and 14
women was most likely the result of a U.S. cruise mis-
sile strike—an opening shot in a U.S. military cam-
paign that began without notice and has never been
officially confirmed.
Amnesty International says it has obtained photo-
graphs apparently showing the remnants of missiles
known to be held only by U.S. forces at the site of the
air strike against al Qaeda suspects.
―The Yemeni authorities have a duty to ensure
public safety and to bring to justice those engaged in
attacks that deliberately target members of the public,
but when doing so they must abide by international
law,‖ said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International‘s
Director for the Middle East and North Africa Pro-
gramme. ―Enforced disappearances, torture and other
ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions are never
permissible, and the Yemeni authorities must im-
mediately cease these violations.‖
―It is particularly worrying that states such as
Saudi Arabia and the USA are directly or indirectly
aiding the Yemeni government in a downward spi-
ral away from previously improving human rights
record.‖
The Washington Post now reports that the CIA
is likely to have a larger role in President Obama‘s
expanding war in Yemen:
―Proponents of expanding the CIA‘s role argue
that years of flying armed drones over Pakistan
have given the agency expertise in identifying tar-
gets and delivering pinpoint strikes. The agency‘s
attacks also leave fewer telltale signs.
‗You‘re not going to find bomb parts with
USA markings on them,‘ the senior U.S. official
said.‖
Paul Woodward has run War in Context http://warincontext.org since 2002 and can be found at
Twitter http://twitter.com/warincontext.
CIA wants to cover up U.S. war
crimes in Yemen
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The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 11
Sen
d y
our co
ngressp
erson a
subscrip
tion to
Th
e W
ar
Cr
ime
s
Tim
es
Change we can’t believe in:
Business as Usual in Iraq by Marjorie Cohn
September 13—Last week, Presi-
dent Obama ceremoniously announced
that U.S. combat operations had ended
in Iraq. As Democrats face an uphill
battle in the upcoming midterm elec-
tions, Obama felt he had to make good
on his campaign promise
to move the fighting from
Iraq to Afghanistan. But
while he has escalated the
killing in Afghanistan, it‘s
business as usual in Iraq.
The United States,
with its huge embassy in
Baghdad and five large
bases throughout Iraq,
will continue to pull the
strings there. Last week, Vice President
Biden delivered a power-sharing plan
to the Iraqis, who have been unable to
form a government in the six months
since the March election resulted in a
stalemate. ―We think that‘s better for
the future of Iraq,‖ Biden declared. The
New York Times speculated about
whether ―the Americans can close the
deal.‖ But the United States will con-
tinue to do a lot more than simply
make suggestions about how Iraqis
should share political power.
The timing of Obama's announce-
ment that combat troops are leaving
Iraq is based on the status of forces
agreement (SOFA) the Bush admini-
stration negotiated with the Iraqis in
2008. It calls for U.S. combat troops to
leave Iraq by August 31, 2010. The
SOFA also requires the Pentagon to
withdraw all of its forces by the end of
2011, but this date may be extended.
Obama's speech about withdrawing
combat troops from Iraq is an effort to
demonstrate compliance with the
SOFA as the midterm elections draw
near. But events on the ground reveal
that he is playing a political version of
the old shell game. As Obama pro-
claimed the redeployment of a Stryker
battalion out of Iraq, 3,000 combat
troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry
Regiment redeployed back into Iraq
from Fort Hood, Texas. And that cav-
alry regiment will have plenty of com-
pany. The State Department is more
than doubling its ―security contractors‖
to 7,000 to make sure U.S. interests are
protected. And with them will come 24
Blackhawk helicopters, 50 Mine Resis-
tant Ambush-Protected vehicles and
other military equipment.
Fifty thousand U.S. military troops
remain in Iraq. Forty-five hundred U.S. special forces troops continue to fight
and kill with Iraqi special forces.
American troops are still authorized to
take preemptive action against any threat
they perceive. The policy regarding air
strikes and bombings will remain un-
changed. And untold numbers of
"civilian contractors"—more accurately
called mercenaries—will stay in Iraq,
unaccountable for their war crimes.
When Obama spoke to the nation
about ending combat operations in Iraq,
he delivered his message with a spin that
would make George W. Bush proud.
Obama renamed the U.S. occupation of
Iraq ―Operation New Dawn,‖ and talked
of the sacrifices we made during
―Operation Iraqi Freedom.‖
But he failed to mention the more
than 100,000 dead Iraqis, the untold
numbers of wounded Iraqis and the 2
million Iraqis who went into exile. He
said nothing about the few hours per day
that most Iraqis enjoy electricity. He ne-
glected to note that unions have been
outlawed and
I r aq‘ s i n fr a -
structure is in
shambles. And
he omitted any
reference to the
i l l e ga l i t y o f
Bush‘s war of
aggression—in
violation of the
UN Charter—
and Bush‘s pol-
icy of tor ture
and abuse of
Iraqis—in vio-
la t ion of the
Geneva Con-
v e n t i o n s .
Obama chose instead to praise his prede-
cessor, saying, ―No one could doubt
President Bush‘s...commitment to our
security.‖ But foreign occupation of Iraq
and mistreatment of prisoners never
made us more secure.
Obama also failed to remind us that
we went to war based on two lies by the
Bush administration: that Iraq had weap-
ons of mass destruction, and that al
Qaeda was in bed with Saddam Hussein.
Obama spoke of ―credible elections‖
in Iraq. But ―Iraq does not have a func-
tional democracy,‖ said Raed Jarrar, Iraq
consultant for American Friends Service
Committee and a senior fellow at Peace
Action. ―We cannot
expect to have a
functional democ-
racy from Iraq that
was imposed by a
foreign occupation,‖
he said on Democ-
racy Now!
―The new Iraqi
state is among the
most corrupt in the
world,‖ journalist
Nir Rosen wrote in
Foreign Policy. ―It
is only effective at
being bruta l and
providing a mini-
mum level of secu-
rity. It fails to pro-
vide adequate ser-
vices to its people,
millions of whom
are barely able to
survive. Iraqis are
traumatized. Every
day there are assassinations with si-
lenced pistols and the small magnetic
car bombs known as sticky bombs.‖
Obama put the cost of the wars at
$3 trillion, an awesome sum that could
well be used to provide universal
health care, quality education, and im-
proved infrastructure to create jobs in
this country.
But he overlooked the cost of treat-
ing our disabled veterans, many of
whom return with traumatic brain in-
jury and post traumatic stress disorder.
―There is no question that the Iraq war
added substantially to the federal debt,‖
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes wrote
in the Washington Post. ―The global
financial crisis was due, at least in part,
to the war,‖ they added.
Regardless of how Obama tries to
spin his message about the disaster the
United States has created in Iraq, 60
percent of Americans think the U.S.
invasion of Iraq was a mistake, 70 per-
cent believe it wasn‘t worth sacrificing American lives, and only one quarter
feel it made us safer. The majority of
Iraqis also oppose the U.S. occupation.
As I ponder events unfolding in Iraq,
and Obama's efforts to explain them to
us, I am reminded of the highly deco-
rated Marine Corps General Smedley
Butler. Nearly 70 years ago he declared
that, "War is a racket." He was referring
to the use of Marines in Central America
during the early 20th Century to protect
U.S. corporations like United Fruit,
which were exploiting agricultural re-
sources in that region.
In my view, the Iraq war had a simi-
lar purpose—to secure the rich Iraqi oil
fields and make them available to corpo-
rations that will continue to feed Amer-
ica's petroleum addiction.
In a more honest speech, Obama
would have said we successfully re-
moved a leader who was unfriendly to
American geopolitical and economic
interests and replaced him with people
beholden to U.S. money and materiel.
U.S. forces have been downsized and re-
branded. The ―endur ing presence
posts‖ (new nomenclature for U.S. bases
in Iraq) will ensure that we maintain he-
gemony in Iraq. Mission accomplished.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past presi-dent of the National Lawyers Guild. The
author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways
the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, she is deputy secretary general of the Inter-national Association of Democratic Law-
yers. See www.marjoriecohn.com.
When Obama spoke to the nation
about ending combat operations in Iraq, he delivered his message with
a spin that would make George W.
Bush proud.
He failed to mention:
more than 100,000 dead Iraqis* untold numbers of wounded
2 million in exile
chronic lack of electricity unions have been outlawed
infrastructure in shambles
the illegality of Bush‘s war of aggression the war was based on lies
the cost of treating disabled vets... T
ake
a st
ack o
f T
he
Wa
r
Cr
ime
s T
ime
s t
o y
our
next
pro
test
, par
ty m
eeti
ng,
mar
ch,
or
ice
crea
m s
ocia
l.
*Editor‘s note: Estimates vary widely: a 2006 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study estimated as many as 654,965 Iraqi dead; in 2007, the British polling firm
Opinion Research Business estimated 1.2 million.
12 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
Orwell would be proud. The United States is about to
begin its tenth year in Afghanistan in an attempt to
prove that ―endless war‖ is not only possible, but the
accepted norm in American society.
But why has militarism become such an integral part
of our political and social lives in this country?
I see three main areas of influence on why we accept
the present state of aggressive militarism in this coun-
try:
1. The state‘s use of messaging on ―war‖ and
―terrorism.‖
2. The media‘s servitude towards aggressive milita-
ristic policy.
3. The social and cultural reinforcement of milita-
rism.
Messaging on war and terrorism, or
Why my brain is always scared
G.M. Gilbert, an American psychologist who inter-
viewed Herman Goering at Nuremberg in his Nurem-
berg Diary quoted Goering as saying:
...the people can always be brought to the bid-
ding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
to do is tell them they are being attacked and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger. It works
the same in any country.
The human brain is well constructed to deal with dan-
ger and fear on an automated and highly developed
level. The amygdala is responsible for both fear condi-
tioning and memory consolidation. These combined
are the neurological area of the brain to condition and
retain fear memories.
In other words, a sweet spot to frighten at will and
control the masses.
The use of the phrase ―war on terror‖ is at best a disin-
genuous means of simultaneously stimulating the fear
response and the use of meta-
phors that have no real meaning.
T h e w o r d s ― t e r r o r ‖ a n d
―terrorism‖ are the most politi-
cally manipulated words of our
time and may be applied to any
country, group or individual you
wish to bomb, torture, or indefi-
nitely detain.
It may also be used by the
United States to nimbly point
out those who are ―state spon-
sors of terrorism," which pres-
ently include Cuba, Iran, Sudan,
and Syria. Never mind that we
sponsored El Salvadoran death
squads or backed the likes of
Marcos, Mobutu, Pinochet, or
the Shah for decades that led to
the torture and death of hun-
dreds of thousands, possibly
millions.
The cowardly MSM or
How to be a poster child for
cognitive dissonance
Does the mainstream media (MSM) really ignore what
is happening or change reality to fit government pol-
icy?
As Glenn Greenwald, in a
recent Salon article, so suc-
cinctly put it:
A newly released study
from students at Harvard's
John F. Kennedy School
of Government provides
the latest evidence of how
thoroughly devoted the
American establishment
media is to amplifying and serving (rather
than checking) government officials. This
new study examines how waterboarding has
been discussed by America's four largest
newspapers over the past 100 years, and finds
that the technique, almost invariably, was un-
equivocally referred to as "torture"—until the
U.S. Government began openly using it and
insisting that it was not torture... Similarly,
American newspapers are highly inclined to
refer to waterboarding as "torture" when prac-
ticed by other nations, but will suddenly re-
fuse to use the term when it's the U.S. em-
ploying that technique.
Greenwald also points out that such MSM outlets as
the New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR
explicitly adopted policies to ban the use of the word
"torture" for techniques the U.S. Government had au-
thorized, once government officials announced they
should not be called "torture."
So torture is now ―harsh interrogation techniques‖?
Is this the terminology used in the UN Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrad-
ing Treatment or Punishment?
This is the document the United States signed in 1988
and reaffirmed in 1994 that defines torture in Article
1.1 as:
Any act by which severe pain or suffering,
whether physical or mental, is intentionally
inflicted on a person for such purposes as ob-
taining from him or a third person, informa-
tion or a confession, punishing him for an act
he or a third person has committed or is sus-
pected of having committed, or intimidating
or coercing him or a third person, or for any
reason based on discrimination of any kind,
when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or
at the instigation of or with the consent or
acquiescence of a public official or other per-
son acting in an official capacity. It does not
include pain or suffering arising only from,
inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Article 2.2 states:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever,
whether a state of war or a threat of war, inter-
nal political instability or any other public
emergency, may be invoked as a justification
of torture.
The Endless War and American Society Is endless war the American way?
Why militarism permeates
our society By Jim Turpin
This article originally appeared on The Rag Blog (theragblog.blogspot.com)
The words “terror” and “terrorism” are the most politically manipulated words of our time and may be applied to any country, group or individual you wish to bomb, torture, or indefinitely detain.
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 13
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Images for this article by Mark Runge
(http://mark4art.com/)
When The Truth Becomes Unacceptable
The worst thing I experienced in Vietnam was the lie.
100% of the Vietnam War was an absolute lie.
100% of the Iraq War is an absolute lie.
100% of the Afghanistan War is an absolute lie.
When an active duty soldier or a veteran puts
a gun to his head, and blows his brains out,
he is putting a bullet in America's head.
( I saw that happen in Vietnam.)
You kill the lie!
You kill the conflict that is unbearable.
Whenever the truth threatens one's belief system,
and the lie outweighs your ability to cope, you pull the trigger.
Instead of putting the American flag over the casket,
they ought to put the American flag in the casket with the body,
because they both died. —Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic Vietnam 1970-71
August 4, 2010
Orwell was again right: ―...the object of
torture is torture... the object of power is
power.‖
Cultural and societal acceptance of war
Or, 'That’s Militainment!'
―Militainment‖ or entertainment with mili-
tary themes is ubiquitous in music, televi-
sion, movies and video games.
It is even everywhere in clothing.
Just look around the next time you
walk down the street or go to a
clothing store. Desert-style camo
wear is EVERYWHERE. Women
have camo shorts, men wear camo
hats, and even babies have camo
bibs and jumpers.
Sears ran a line of clothing in 2008
that ―signed a deal with the U.S.
Army to launch the All American
Army Brand's First Infantry Divi-
sion clothing collection. It marks
the first time the U.S. Army has
officially licensed its marks and
insignias; licensing fees will be
used to support military programs
for troops and their families.
The president of Sears Apparel
said the brand will be prominently
featured during the retailer's Fall
Forward fashion. The line will also
be included in future marketing
campaigns, including those slated
for the holiday season.
"Over the years, military-inspired
clothing has played a distinct role
in shaping fashion trends," Mr.
Israel said. "We are now able to exclusively
offer a line that is pure to the origins of that
inspiration." (Military.com 9/3/08)
Recent war video games are international best
sellers (―Call of Duty,‖ ―Modern Warfare,‖
and ―God of War‖) and are excellent training
for future military recruits. At the least, they
can be considered realistic ―war porn."
The Army recently had to close a $12 million
recruiting station in Philadelphia with interac-
tive video exhibits, nearly 80 video-gaming
stations, a replica command-and-control cen-
ter, conference rooms, and Black Hawk heli-
copter and Humvee combat simulators.
It was repeatedly targeted for protests by
those who said the Army's use of first-person-
shooter video games desensitized visitors to
violence and enticed teens into the military.
Anyone over 13 could play games,
though the most graphic ones were
restricted to those 18 and older.
War movies and TV specials are
making a comeback with The Hurt
Locker (2009), Inglorious Basterds (2009), and the HBO special The Pacific (2010) which all sell war as
the ―Band of Brothers‖ myth to per-
petuate heroism and nationalism.
Music sells war, especially the
country genre including Toby
Keith‘s lyrics:
Justice will be served/ And the
battle will rage/ This big dog
will fight when you rattle his
cage/ And you'll be sorry that
you messed with the U.S. of A./
'Cause we'll put a boot in your
ass/ It's the American Way.
Endless war… It is indeed the
―American way."
Jim Turpin is a native of Austin, TX and a member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI
coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.
Happy talk and fluff obscure
the reality of war
The New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR banned the use of the word " tor ture" for techniques the U.S. Government had authorized.
Sears signed a deal with the U.S. Army to launch the All American Army Brand's First Infantry Division clothing collection. This is the first time the U.S. Army has officially licensed its marks and insignias.
(ph
oto
by M
ike H
astie
)
14 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
by Chuck Fager
The next Martin Luther King holiday,
January 17, 2011, will carry a special
weight of meaning. That day will also be
the fiftieth anniversary of President Dwight D.
Eisenhower‘s farewell address.
In this address, the retiring president
introduced the now-famous phrase
"military-industrial complex" (MIC) into
the public vocabulary. Here is the nub of
what he said:
This conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large
arms industry is new in the
American experience. The total
influence—economic, political,
even spiritual—is felt in every
city, every Statehouse, every office of
the Federal government. We recog-
nize the imperative need for this
development. Yet we must not fail
to comprehend its grave implica-
tions. Our toil, resources, and
livelihood are all involved; so is
the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we
must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the mili-
tary-industrial complex. The po-
tential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will
persist.
The full speech is still worth ponder-
ing. But one phrase here, overlooked in
most discussions of the MIC concept,
leaped from the page as I reread it.
―The total influence [of the MIC]—
economic, political, even spiritual—is
felt in every city, every Statehouse,
every office of the Federal government.‖
The military-industrial complex—a
spiritual influence.
In my experience, absolutely.
During the half-century since this
historic speech, presidents have come
and gone; political parties have waxed
and waned; there have been times of
open war, punctuated by intervals of
―peace‖ and covert conflicts; the econ-
omy has seen boom and bust.
Yet through it all, the size and reach
of the MIC has steadily grown. The MIC
is, among other things, the top consumer
of oil and a major source of mostly un-
regulated toxic pollution. The MIC's
reach is more pervasive than ever; it has
become so familiar that many people
hardly notice it, except in concentrated
locations like Fort Bragg and other large
military bases. Today, it would be more
accurate to call it the Military-Industrial-
Political-Academic-Scientific-Think-Tank-Mass-Media-Enter ta inment-
R e l i g i o u s C o m p l e x . ( T h e
―MIPASTTMMERC‖? We'll stick with
MIC.)
There's more. Alongside the visible
economic and political aspects of the
MIC, a secret, extra-legal set of struc-
tures has been constructed that have
wreaked havoc across the world and laid
the foundation for a police state here.
Like the visible parts, the secret struc-
tures have grown over time as well; and
many of them are based in North Caro-
lina. We have learned many horrifying
details about their activities in the past
few years. Unfortunately, too many
Americans seem bent on forgetting all
t h a t a s
q u i c k l y a s
possible.
O ne of t he
most pene-
trating writers
of the mid-
t w e n t i e t h
century, Mil-
t on Ma yer ,
described the
p r o c e s s o f
accommoda-
t i o n t o s e -
c r e c y a n d
repression in
under s ta ted
but compel-
ling detail in his classic study, They Thought They Were Free. Calmly yet
vividly, Mayer showed how ordinary,
virtuous 1930s Germans were
seamlessly reduced from citi-
zens to cogs in a totalitarian
state.
Among the key features of
this malevolent transforma-
tion was that for most people,
all it entailed was doing noth-
ing. As Mayer put it, ―the rest
of the 70 million Germans,
apart from the million or so
who operated the whole ma-
chinery of Nazism, had nothing to do
except not to interfere.‖
―Doing nothing‖ does not mean cow-
ering in a corner, but rather focusing
fixedly on daily life: family, job, relig-
ion, entertainment, even quiet political
hand-wringing—all while being careful
―not to interfere.‖
This gradual accommodation—
―doing nothing,‖ being distracted and
forgetting the unpleasant disclosures—is
facilitated when the MIC sprinkles jobs
and money across every state and most
counties. It is further reinforced when it
is, literally, blessed by God—or, at least,
by God's self-proclaimed representatives.
Yes, the MIC's reach definitely in-
cludes the ―religious‖ and spiritual.
Let's look at the religious connection briefly. It has several important aspects;
we will speak of three.
First is a very direct connection. The
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
(www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org) has
exposed deep involvement by a kind of
crusading fundamentalism in high levels
of the military services, an involvement
with ominous implications for freedom
of religion among service members and
for conflicts involving Muslim populations.
Secondly, and more broadly, much of
religion, especially the southern white
Protestant forms of Christianity, has
adopted the conviction that the United
States is God's chosen instrument,
charged to ―rid the world of evil-doers,‖
as a former President declared in 2001.
Thus, these churches—some of the larg-
est in the country—not only support but
actively advocate for the projection of
U.S. military might around the world,
regardless of the cost in blood and treas-
ure to people in this country, but espe-
cially to foreigners. This is, they are
sure, God's work. I have become con-
vinced that this ―American War Christi-
anity‖ is one of the key pillars of U.S.
Militarism.
Third, the MIC itself has taken on the
character of an autonomous, self -
propagating entity. I compare it to a
schoolyard merry-go-round, with bars
pushed by interests great and small, such
that it has developed so much momen-
tum it seems to run by itself. We tend to
see this motion as centered in and around
Washington's political whirl. But this is a
restricted view. The hands pushing the
bars to such a high and steady pitch are
reaching from a much wider area—in
truth, all over the country.
I call this image the Wheel of War. It
r e p r e -
sents the
f u l f i l l -
ment, in
s p a d e s ,
of Presi-
dent Ei-
senhower's prophecy of ―the disastrous
rise of misplaced power.‖
What is spiritual about this self-
spinning wheel? To illustrate this, I turn
to the most revealing description that I've
found. It is two millennia old and comes
from, of all people, the Apostle Paul in
the New testament. (Non-religious read-ers—please bear with me here.) In sev-
eral passages of his letters, he writes of
―powers and principalities,‖ by which he
means disembodied spiritual powers that
have a concrete impact on the visible
world: ―spiritual influence,‖ to repeat
Eisenhower's insight.
What does this phrase powers and
principalities mean? Consider, as an ex-
ample, Fayetteville, North Carolina:
home to both Quaker House and Fort
Bragg, one of the largest U.S. army
bases.
In many ways, Fayetteville is no dif-
ferent from any other urban collection of
human specimens; among them are
saints and sinners, happiness and trag-
edy. Families start, grow, and sometimes
come apart there, as elsewhere. Individu-
als and groups do the best they can given
their circumstances.
All of this is true, but it is not the
whole truth. The citizens of Fayetteville
and Fort Bragg are also part of larger
systems, systems which have their own
autonomy, momentum, and identity. To-
gether, they add up to more than the sum
of their individual human components.
These larger, supra-individual systems
and their dynamics make up what we can
call the spiritual dimension of the area.
Here is one example: Since I came to
Fayetteville in early 2002, through the
end of 2009, the 82nd Airborne Division
at Fort Bragg has had five different com-
manders. Each of them was a distinct
individual with his own personality,
style, and abilities. It surprises
me as an outsider how quickly
they come and go; yet the 82nd, a
unit of more than 14,000 troops
with 80-plus years of active duty,
goes on. As a unit, it maintains
its own ―personality,‖ its own
momentum, its own ―spirit.‖
The 82nd Airborne, I would sug-
gest, ―leads‖ its commanders as
much as its commanders ―lead‖
it, if not more. Its ―spirit‖ is more
important than any individual.
On a much larger scale, it seems clear
that the whole U.S. militarist enterprise
has developed an overarching ―spirit,‖
with its own dynamic and momentum. It
h a s b e -
c o m e a n
a u t o n o -
m o u s
― power . ‖
The i dea
tha t i t i s
controlled by a handful of policymakers
in Washington seems less and less realis-
tic. Eisenhower was right; since 1961,
ten presidents have occupied the White
House. If changing faces in the Oval
Office were enough to tame this power,
it would have happened. Instead, as they
have come and gone, the MIC has kept
growing, regardless.
The processes hinted at here are seen
in the Bible. These are the ―powers‖ and
―principalities‖ that Paul wrote of in his
letter to the new church at Ephesus,
S l o w i n g t h e W h e e l o f W a r : A S p i r i t u a l S t r u g g l e
Ike warned of the spiritual influence of the military-
industrial complex.
The whole U.S. militarist enterprise
has developed an overarching ―spirit,‖ with its own dynamic and momen-
tum…The idea that it is controlled by
a handful of policymakers in Wash-ington seems less and less realistic.
―American War Christianity‖ is one
of the key pillars of U.S. Militarism.
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 15
chapter 6:12: ―For we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principali-
ties, against powers, against the rulers of
the darkness of this world, against spiri-
tual wickedness in high places.‖
It is easy to vulgarize, mock, or dis-
miss these ideas as ancient superstition.
But one is not required to ―believe‖ in
the Bible or supernatural entities to find
value in such images. Careful sociologi-
cal studies could construct secular coun-
terparts for this ―powers and principali-
ties‖ motif. Besides, President Eisen-
hower, one of the most experienced war-
rior leaders of the last century, named
this ―spiritual influence‖ of the MIC
nearly 50 years before I did, and he was
no myth-bound sentimentalist.
The concept has also had much useful
explanatory value for me as director of
Quaker House near Fort Bragg. It helps
me to make sense of what our tiny out-
post of peace work is up against.
For one thing, take Paul's associated
declaration that ―we wrestle not against
flesh and blood‖—that is, mere evil per-
sons. This has been a crucial insight,
helping me see past the fixation on indi-
viduals that I believe is a great obstacle
to adequate understanding and planning
for peace work.
This sense is confirmed by personal
experience that Fayetteville and Fort
Bragg are no more full of irredeemably
evil people than is your hometown. All
of them are Children of God, even those
in desert camouflage uniforms loaded
down with deadly weapons.
And yet this city—like our country—
is under the heel of the Spirit of War.
Fort Bragg is a key cog in the machinery
of militarism. The reach is worldwide,
but many of the key gears rotate back to
and mesh here in eastern North Carolina.
(For that matter, its activities, especially
training, extend well into the western end
of the state as well.
Behind an outward semblance of or-
dinary existence, massive projects are
hatched here for destruction, torture,
propaganda, and deception, combining
into a vast apparatus animated by this
spectral image. Although it is drawn
from a two-millennia-old myth, the
Spirit of War feels to me as tangible and
looming as the huge oak tree at the foot
of the Quaker House lawn. It can be
heard rumbling through the woods; its
priests and acolytes carry out their rituals
in the open; its sacrificial victims regu-
larly stare out of the pages of our local
paper.
For instance, by the end of 2009,
more than 300 soldiers based at Fort
Bragg had been killed in Iraq and Af-
ghanistan, and several thousand more
were gravely wounded. In addition, doz-
ens more killed themselves or their
spouses, and an unknown, but huge num-
ber, bear the mental wounds of what they
have done in combat.
And what of the Iraqis, Afghanis, and
others killed, maimed, or made homeless
as these troops carried out their orders?
Millions. In cozier precincts, this steadily
mounting death toll can be kept at a safe,
abstract distance. In Fayetteville, one
foregoes that luxury.
In the New Testament, the struggle
against these ―principalities and powers‖
is commonly referred to as ―spiritual
warfare.‖ Early Quakers, in the 1660
letter to Charles II describing their paci-
fist stance, wrote that ―our weapons are
spiritual, and not carnal,‖ paraphrasing
Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians,
Chapter 10:4, ―Yet mighty through God,
to the plucking/pulling down of the
strongholds of sin and Satan, who is the
author of wars, fighting, murder, and
plots.‖
What does this mean? They weren't
going to make war against powers and
principalities the way one would against
a physical army. But they were called to
make war. And so, I suggest, are we.
There are weapons to be deployed, tac-
tics evaluated, and strategies planned.
You don‘t need to be ―religious‖ to apply
these insights.
In thinking about peace strategies,
I ' v e l e a r n e d t h e m o s t f r o m —
paradoxically—the military, especially
the classic strategy text, The Art of War,
by Sun Tzu. It's as old as the Bible, and
military thinkers treat it like Scripture.
But it's even better in one way: it's much
s hor ter . (R ea d i t f r ee on l i ne a t
www.sonshi.com/learn.html.) Sun Tzu's basic advice is very straightforward: for
victory, identify the strengths and weak-
nesses of yourself and your adversary;
then apply your strengths to their weak-
nesses while defending your own.
What would this mean for peace
work? First of all, it means thinking
―outside the box‖ of our preoccupation
with the Washington political scene, and
taking stock of our unique strengths.
Then it involves learning more about the
MIC, so we can apply our strengths crea-
tively to maximum effect.
Easy to say, harder to do. But it's been
done. There's actually a long history of
such creative peace work, though regret-
tably it's little known among us. To-
gether, these efforts constitute the Wheel
of Peace, a practical force that presses in
the opposite direction from the Wheel of
War and helps slow its momentum.
For a Quaker, these efforts include
playing quiet but important parts in shap-
ing the careers of non-Quaker leaders
such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the
pacifist Emperor of Japan; helping nego-
tiate the release of Nelson Mandela from
a South African prison; launching the
women's rights struggle from the kitchen
of a rural New York farmhouse; quietly
helping shape the Law of the Sea treaty;
and honoring the sacrifices of martyrs
like my friend, Tom Fox, a Quaker peace
worker kidnapped and murdered in Iraq
in 2006. And other groups have their
own heritage of peace work, though most
are too little known.
Sure, the Wheel of War is currently
much bigger and has enormous momen-
tum. But the record of our nonviolent
―spiritual warfare‖ is nothing to sneeze
at. There's much more than we can de-
scribe here, and it is spiritually uplifting
and encouraging in practical terms to
become more familiar with it. And with
imagination and the willingness to think
―outside the box,‖ we can generate excit-
ing new ways to push the ―Wheel of
Peace.‖ I believe tha t such sel f -
education—about our own history and
about the MIC—is a major priority for
long-term peace witness. And Sun Tzu,
that sage worldly warrior, agrees:
If you know the enemy and know
yourself, you need not fear the
result of a hundred battles. If you
know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will
also suffer a defeat. If you know
neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle.
I don't know if the Spirit of War will
ever be fully defeated. But our call, like
that of those who have gone before, is to
keep up our ―spiritual warfare.‖ I think
even the unsentimental President Eisen-
hower would understand. And by doing
so, we can achieve many victories.
We've done it before. Let's renew it, and
keep it up.
Chuck Fager is Director of Quaker House, a peace project that has been at
work next door to Fort Bragg since 1969. The ideas in this article are expanded in a pamphlet, Study War Some More If You
Want To Work For Peace, published by Quaker House. For more information, go
to www.quakerhouse.org
The Wheel of War represents the fulfillment of Eisenhower’s prophecy
of "the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”
The fixation on individuals is a great obstacle to
adequate understanding and planning for peace work.
© Chuck Fager
16 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
H.W. Bush‘s war against Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein, showed that Ameri-
can troops like Israeli soldiers knew
how to win quickly, cheaply, and hu-
manely. Generals like H. Norman
Schwarzkopf persuaded themselves
that their brief desert campaign against
Iraq had replicated—even eclipsed—
the battlefield exploits of such famous
Israeli warriors as Moshe Dayan and
Yitzhak Rabin. Vietnam faded into
irrelevance.
For both Israel and the United
States, however, appearances proved
deceptive. Apart from fostering grand
illusions, the splendid wars of 1967 and
1991 decided little. In both cases, vic-
tory turned out to be more apparent
than real. Worse, triumphalism fostered
massive future miscalculation.
On the Golan Heights, in Gaza, and
throughout the West Bank, proponents of
a Greater Israel—disregarding Wash-
ington‘s objections—set out to assert
permanent control over territory that
Israel had seized. Yet ―facts on the
ground‖ created by successive waves of
Jewish settlers did little to enhance Is-
raeli security. They succeeded chiefly
in shackling Israel to a rapidly growing
and resentful Palestinian population that
it could neither pacify nor assimilate.
In the Persian Gulf, the benefits
reaped by the United States after 1991
likewise turned out to be ephemeral.
Saddam Hussein survived and became,
in the eyes of successive American
administrations, an imminent threat to
regional stability. This perception
prompted (or provided a pretext for) a radi-
cal reorientation of strategy in Wash-
ington. No longer content to prevent an
unfriendly outside power from control-
ling the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Washing-
ton now sought to dominate the entire
Greater Middle East. Hegemony be-
came the aim. Yet the United States
proved no more successful than Israel
in imposing its writ.
During the 1990s, the Pentagon em-
barked willy-nilly upon what became
its own variant of a settlement policy.
Yet U.S. bases dotting the Islamic
world and U.S. forces operating in the
region proved hardly more welcome
than the Israeli settlements dotting the
occupied territories and the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as-
signed to protect them. In both cases,
presence provoked (or provided a pre-
text for) resistance. Just as Palestinians
vented their anger at the Zionists in
Fukuyama penned his essay, faith in
war‘s problem-solving capacity had
begun to erode. As early as 1945,
among several great powers—thanks to
war, now great in name only—that
faith disappeared altogether.
Among nations classified as liberal
democracies, only two resisted this
trend. One was the United States, the
sole major belligerent to emerge from
the Second World War stronger, richer,
and more confident. The second was
Israel, created as a direct consequence
of the horrors unleashed by that cata-
clysm. By the 1950s, both countries
subscribed to this common conviction:
national security (and, arguably, na-
tional survival) demanded unambigu-
ous military superiority. In the
lexicon of American and Israeli
politics, ―peace‖ was a code-
word. The essential prerequisite
for peace was for any and all
adversaries, real or potential, to
accept a condition of permanent
inferiority. In this regard, the
two nations—not yet intimate
allies—stood apart from the rest
of the Western world.
So even as they professed their de-
votion to peace, civilian and military
elites in the United States and Israel
prepared obsessively for war. They saw
no contradiction between rhetoric and
reality.
Yet belief in the efficacy of military
power almost inevitably breeds the
temptation to put that power to work.
―Peace through strength‖ easily enough
becomes ―peace through war.‖ Israel
succumbed to this temptation in 1967.
For Israelis,
the Six Day
War proved
a t u r n i n g
p o i n t .
P l u c k y
Davi d de-
feated, and
t h e n b e -
came, Goli-
ath. Even as
the United
States was
f l a i l i n g
a b o u t i n
V i e t n a m ,
Is r ael had
e v i d e n t l y
s ucceeded
i n d e f i n i -
tively mas-
tering war.
A quarter -
c e n t u r y
la ter , U.S.
forces seem-
ingly caught up. In 1991,
O pe r a t i on
D e s e r t
S t o r m ,
G e o r g e
create new, or more effective, instru-
ments of coercion. Military innovation
assumed many forms. Most obviously,
there were the weapons: dreadnoughts
and aircraft carriers, rockets and mis-
siles, poison gas, and atomic bombs—
the list is a long one. In their effort to
gain an edge, however, nations devoted
equal attention to other factors: doc-
trine and organization, training systems
and mobilization schemes, intelligence
collection and war plans.
All of this furious activity, whether
undertaken by France or Great Britain,
Russia or Germany, Japan or the
United States, derived from a common
belief in the plausibility of victory.
Expressed in simplest terms, the West-
ern military tradition could be reduced
to this proposition: war remains a vi-
able instrument of statecraft, the accou-
trements of modernity serving, if any-
thing, to enhance its utility.
Grand Illusions
That was theory. Reality, above all
the two world wars of the last century,
told a decidedly different story. Armed
conflict in the industrial age reached
new heights of lethality and destructiveness.
Once begun, wars devoured everything,
inflicting staggering material, psycho-
logical, and moral damage. Pain vastly
exceeded gain. In that regard, the war
of 1914-1918 became emblematic:
even the winners ended up losers.
When fighting eventually stopped, the
victors were left not to celebrate but to
mourn. As a consequence, well before
(Continued from page 1)
F a i l u r e of W a r their midst, radical Islamists targeted
Americans whom they regarded as neo-
colonial infidels.
Stuck
No one doubted tha t Israel is
(regionally) and Americans (globally)
enjoyed unquestioned military domi-
nance. Throughout Israel‘s near abroad,
its tanks, fighter-bombers, and war-
ships operated at will. So, too, did
American tanks, fighter-bombers, and
warships wherever they were sent.
So what? Events made it increas-
ingly evident that military dominance
did not translate into concrete political
advantage. Rather than enhancing the
prospects for peace, coercion produced
ever more complications. No matter
how badly battered and beaten, the
―terrorists‖ (a catch-all term ap-
plied to anyone resisting Israeli or
American authority) weren‘t in-
timidated, remained unrepentant,
and kept coming back for more.
Israel ran smack into this problem
during Operation Peace for Galilee,
its 1982 intervention in Lebanon.
U.S. forces encountered it a decade
later during Operation Restore Hope,
the West‘s gloriously titled foray into
Somalia. Lebanon possessed a puny
army; Somalia had none at all. Rather
than producing peace or restoring hope,
however, both operations ended in frus-
tration, embarrassment, and failure.
And those operations proved but
harbingers of worse to come. By the
1980s, the IDF‘s glory days were past.
Rather than lightning strikes deep into
the enemy rear, the narrative of Israeli
military history became a cheerless
recital of dirty wars—unconventional
conflicts against irregular forces yield-
ing problematic results. The First Inti-
fada (1987-1993), the Second Intifada
(2000-2005), a second Lebanon War
(2006), and Operation Cast Lead, the
notorious 2008-2009 incursion into
Gaza, all conformed to this pattern.
Meanwhile, the differential between
Palestinian and Jewish Israeli birth
rates emerged as a looming threat—a
―demographic bomb,‖ Benjamin
Netanyahu called it. Here were new
facts on the ground that military forces,
unless employed pursuant to a policy of
ethnic cleansing, could do little to re-
dress. Even as the IDF tried repeatedly
and futilely to bludgeon Hamas and
Hezbollah into submission, demo-
graphic trends continued to suggest that
within a generation a majority of the
population within Israel and the occu-
pied territories would be Arab.
Trailing a decade or so behind Is-
rael, the United States military none-
theless succeeded in duplicating the
IDF‘s experience. Moments of glory
remained, but they would prove fleet-
ing indeed. After 9/11, Washington‘s
efforts to transform (or ―liberate‖) the
(See FAILURE OF WAR on page 17)
Belief in the efficacy of military
power breeds the temptation to put
that power to work. ―Peace through
strength‖ easily enough becomes
―peace through war.‖
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 17
it costs or where it leads. For the mili-
tary-industrial complex, there are con-
tracts to win and buckets of money to
be made. For those who dwell in the
bowels of the national security state,
there are prerogatives to protect. For
elected officials, there are campaign
contributors to satisfy. For appointed
officials, civilian and military, there are
ambitions to be pursued.
And always there is a chattering
claque of militarists, calling for jihad
and insisting on ever greater exertions,
while remaining alert to any hint of
backsliding. In Washington, members
of this militarist camp, by no means
coincidentally including many of the
voices that most insistently defend Is-
raeli bellicosity, tacitly collaborate in
excluding or marginalizing views that
they deem heretical. As a consequence,
what passes for debate on matters relat-
ing to national security is a sham. Thus
are we invited to believe, for example,
that General Petraeus‘s appointment as
the umpteenth U.S. commander in Af-
ghanistan constitutes a milestone on the
way to ultimate success.
Nearly 20 years ago, a querulous
Madeleine Albright demanded to
know: ―What's the point of having this
superb military you're always talking
about if we can't use it?‖ Today, an
altogether different question deserves
our attention: What‘s the point of con-
stantly using our superb military if do-
ing so doesn‘t actually work?
Washington‘s refusal to pose that
question provides a measure of the cor-
ruption and dishonesty permeating our
politics.
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston
University. His new book, Washington Rules: America‘s Path to Permanent
War, has just been published.
This article first appeared on TomDis-
patch on July 29.
persistence to produce something dif-
ferent or better is moonshine.
It remains to be seen whether Israel
and the United States can come to
terms with the end of military history.
Other nations have long since done so,
accommodating themselves to the
changing rhythms of international poli-
tics. That they do so is evidence
not of virtue, but of shrewdness.
China, for example, shows little
eagerness to disarm. Yet as Bei-
jing expands its reach and influ-
ence, it emphasizes trade, invest-
ment, and development assis-
tance. Meanwhile, the People‘s
Liberation Army stays home.
China has stolen a page from an
old American playbook, having
become today the preeminent
practitioner of ―dollar diplo-
macy.‖
The collapse of the Western mili-
tary tradition confronts Israel with
limited choices, none of them
attractive. Given the history of
Judaism and the history of Israel
itself, a reluctance of Israeli Jews to
entrust their safety and security to the
good will of their neighbors or the
warm regards of the international com-
munity is understandable. In a mere six
decades, the Zionist project has pro-
duced a vibrant, flourishing state. Why
put all that at risk? Although the
demographic bomb may be ticking, no
one really knows how much time re-
mains on the clock. If Israelis are in-
clined to continue putting their trust in
(American-supplied) Israeli arms while
hoping for the best, who can blame
them?
In theory, the United States, sharing
none of Israel‘s demographic or geo-
graphic constraints and, far more richly
endowed, should enjoy far greater free-
dom of action. Unfortunately, Wash-
ington has a vested interest in preserv-
ing the status quo, no matter how much
Failure of War
Greater Middle East kicked into high
gear. In Afghanistan and Iraq, George
W. Bush‘s Global War on Terror began
impressively enough, as U.S. forces
operated with a speed and élan that had
once been an Israeli trademark. Thanks
to ―shock and awe,‖ Kabul fell, fol-
lowed less than a year and a half later
by Baghdad. As one senior Army gen-
eral explained to Congress in 2004, the
Pentagon had war all figured out:
―We are now able to create decision
superiority that is enabled by net-
worked systems, new sensors and com-
mand and control capabilities that are
producing unprecedented near real time
situational awareness, increased infor-
mation availability, and an ability to
deliver precision munitions throughout
the breadth and depth of the battle-
space…Combined, these capabilities of
the future networked force will lever-
age information dominance, speed and
precision, and result in decision superi-
ority.‖
The key phrase in this mass of techno-
blather was the one that occurred twice:
―decision superiority.‖ At that moment,
the officer corps, like the Bush admini-
stration, was still convinced that
it knew how to win.
Such claims of success,
however, proved obscenely
premature. Campaigns ad-
vertised as being wrapped up
in weeks dragged on for
years, while American troops
struggled with their own inti-
fadas. When it came to
achieving decisions that ac-
tually stuck, the Pentagon (like
the IDF) remained clueless.
Winless
If any overarching con-
clusion emerges from the
Afghan and Iraq Wars (and
from their Israeli equiva-
lents), it‘s this: victory is a chimera.
Counting on today‘s enemy to yield in
the face of superior force makes about
as much sense as buying lottery tickets
to pay the mortgage: you better be
really lucky.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. economy
went into a tailspin, Americans con-
templated their equivalent of Israel‘s
―demographic bomb‖—a ― fiscal
bomb.‖ Ingrained habits of profligacy,
both individual and collective, held out
the prospect of long-term stagnation:
no growth, no jobs, no fun. Out-of-
control spending on endless wars exac-
erbated that threat.
By 2007, the American officer corps itself gave up on victory, al-
though without giving up on war. First
in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, priorities
shifted. High-ranking generals shelved
their expectations of winning—at least
(Continued from page 16)
as a Rabin or Schwarzkopf would have
understood that term. They sought
instead to not lose. In Washington
as in U.S. military command posts,
the avoidance of outright defeat
emerged as the new gold standard
of success.
As a consequence, U.S. troops
today sally forth from their base
camps not to defeat the enemy, but
to ―protect the people,‖ consistent
with the latest doctrinal fashion.
Meanwhile, tea-sipping U.S. com-
manders cut deals with warlords
and tribal chieftains in hopes of
persuading guerrillas to lay down
their arms.
A new conventional wisdom has
taken hold, endorsed by everyone
from new Afghan War commander
General David Petraeus, the most
celebrated soldier of this American
age, to Barack Obama, commander-
in-chief and Nobel Peace Prize laure-
ate. For the conflicts in which the
United States finds itself enmeshed,
―military solutions‖ do not exist. As
Petraeus himself has emphasized, ―we
can‘t kill our way out of" the fix we‘re
in. In this way, he also pronounced a
eulogy on the Western conception of
warfare of the last two centuries.
The Unasked Question
What then are the implications of
arriving at the end of Western military
history?
In his famous essay, Fukuyama cau-
tioned against thinking that the end of
ideological history heralded the arrival
of global peace and harmony. Peoples
and nations, he predicted, would still
find plenty to squabble about.
With the end of military history, a
similar expectation applies. Politically
motivated violence will persist and may
in specific instances even retain mar-
ginal utility. Yet the prospect of Big Wars
solving Big Problems is probably gone for
good. Certainly, no one in their right mind, Israeli or American, can believe that a
continued resort to force will remedy
whatever it is that fuels anti-Israeli or
anti-American antagonism throughout
much of the Islamic world. To expect
© copyright Chuck Fager
No matter how badly battered and
beaten, the ―terrorists‖ (anyone resisting
Israeli or American authority) weren‘t
intimidated, remained unrepentant, and
kept coming back for more.
Counting on today‘s enemy to yield in
the face of superior force makes about as
much sense as buying lottery tickets to
pay the mortgage: you better be really
lucky.
18 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
Why WikiLeaks Must Be Protected by John Pilger
On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret U.S. military files on the
war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit, and the killing of civil-
ians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From
Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The differ-
ence is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies
are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of
civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the
Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.
There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange be "hunted down" and "rendered." In Washington, I inter-
viewed a senior Defense Department official and asked, "Can you give a guarantee
that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not
be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?" He replied,
"It‘s not my position to give guarantees on anything." He referred me to the
"ongoing criminal investigation" of a U.S. soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged
whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the
Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of
its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that U.S. intelligence
intends to "fatally marginalize" WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with cor-
porate journalists ever ready to play their part.
On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanpour interviewed
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to de-
scribe to her viewers his "anger" at WikiLeaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that
"this leak has blood on its hands," thereby cueing Gates to find WikiLeaks "guilty"
of "moral culpability." Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood
of the people of Af-
ghanistan and Iraq—
as its own files make
clear—is apparently
not for journalistic
enquiry. This is
hardly surprising now
that a new and fear-
less form of public
accountability, which
WikiLeaks repre-
sents, threatens not
only the war-makers
but their apologists.
Their current
propaganda is that
WikiLeaks is
"irresponsible." Ear-
lier this year, before it
released the cockpit video of an American Apache gunship killing 19 civilians in
Iraq, including journalists and children, WikiLeaks sent people to Baghdad to find
the families of the victims in order to prepare them. Prior to the release of last
month‘s Afghan War Logs, WikiLeaks wrote to the White House asking that it
identify names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000
files were withheld and these, says Assange, will not be released until they have
been scrutinized "line by line" so that names of those at risk can be deleted.
The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Austra-
lia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coali-
tion wins the general election on 21 August, "appropriate action" will be taken "if
an Australian citizen has deliberately undertaken an activity that could put at risk
the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any
way." The Australian role in Afghanistan, effectively mercenary in the service of
Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children in a
village in Oruzgan province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of
Australians.
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
—Potter Stewart, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1958-81)
Last May, following the release of the Apache footage, Assange had his Aus-
tralian passport temporarily confiscated when he returned home. The Labor govern-
ment in Canberra denies it has received requests from Washington to detain him
and spy on the WikiLeaks network. The Cameron government also denies this.
They would, wouldn‘t they? Assange, who came to London last month to work on
exposing the war logs, has had to leave Britain hastily for, as he puts it, "safer
climes."
On 16 August, the Guardian, citing Daniel Ellsberg, described the great Israeli
whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as "the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear age."
Vanunu, who alerted the world to Israel‘s secret nuclear weapons,
was kidnapped by the Israelis and incarcerated for 18 years after he
was left unprotected by the London Sunday Times, which had pub-
lished the documents he supplied. In 1983, another heroic whistle-
blower, Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerical officer, sent docu-
ments to the Guardian that disclosed how the Thatcher govern-
ment planned to spin the arrival of American cruise missiles in
Britain. The Guardian complied with a court order to hand over
the documents, and Tisdall went to prison.
In one sense, the WikiLeaks revelations shame the dominant sec-
tion of journalism devoted merely to taking down what cynical and
malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism.
Look on the WikiLeaks site and read a Ministry of Defense docu-
ment that describes the "threat" of real journalism. And so it
should be a threat. Having published skillfully the WikiLeaks ex-
pose of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most
powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of
Julian Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as impor-
tant as any in my lifetime.
I like Julian Assange‘s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult
to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, "When we look at Official-
Secrets-Act-labeled documents we see that they state it is an offense to retain the
information and an offense to destroy the information. So the only possible out-
come we have is to publish the information."
John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in
his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the
1960s.
He regards eye-witness as the essence of good journalism. He has been a foreign correspondent and a front-line war reporter, beginning with the Vietnam war in 1967. He is an
impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adven-tures by Western governments.
In a nation that claims its con-
stitution protects truth-tellers,
the Obama administration is
pursuing and prosecuting more
whistleblowers than any of its
modern predecessors.
U.S. intelligence intends to
" f a t a l l y m a r g i n a l i z e "
WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange: “hunted down” and “rendered”?
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 19
technique, I think that sounds like torture to
me. Isn't it the job of the news media to put the
facts out there, to give as much detailed infor-
mation and to put it in context?"
I disagree with Keller and Shepard. In doing
so, I am contradicting a little voice in my head
telling me it's better to describe than to label.
But this isn't about the rules of good writing.
It's about understanding exactly what took
place during the long, dark years of the Bush
presidency. We have not even begun to come
to terms with what was done in our name dur-
ing that period. Apologists such as Liz Cheney
criticize Barack Obama for being weak because
he ended the barbaric practices championed by
her father.
Words matter. If our largest newspapers had
referred to waterboarding by its proper name,
as they did in the decades leading up to the
Bush years, we might be having a more honest
discuss ion today about i ssues such as
Guantánamo, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and the ongoing fight against terrorism.
Dan Kennedy is an assistant professor of jour-nalism at Northeastern University in Boston, and blogs at Media Nation. This article first
appeared in the Guardian.
Photo, "Waterboarding Demonstration," used with permission by Isabel Esterman—isafrancesca—flickr.com/photos/isa_e/.
used words such as 'harsh' or 'coercive'
to describe waterboarding or simply gave
the practice no treatment, rather than
labelling it torture as they had done for
the previous seven decades.
How pronounced was the shift? The
study found that from the early 1930s
until 1999, the New York Times character-
ized waterboarding as torture in 44 of 54
news articles on the subject (81.5%), and the
Los Angeles Times in 26 of 27 articles (96.3%).
By contrast, from 2002 to 2008, the
NYT referred to waterboarding as torture
in just two of 143 articles (1.4%); the LA
Times, three of 63 (4.8%); the Wall Street Journal, one of 63 (1.6%); and USA To-
day, not at all.
Signifi-
c a n t l y ,
the study
found no
r e l u c -
tance on
the part of newspaper editors to label wa-
terboarding as torture on their opinion
pages. The logical conclusion is that news
executives decided avoiding the "T" word
had become an essential rule of objective
news coverage—a rule they dared not violate
for fear of being accused of liberal bias.
"This government does not torture
people," George W. Bush proclaimed in
2005. And there was little to contradict
that statement in the largest American
newspapers.
The Shorenstein study, published in April, did not be-
came more widely known until early July, when the media
were mainly preoccupied with the upcoming Fourth of July
holiday.
New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, speak-
ing through his paper's Media Decoder blog, called the
study "somewhat misleading and tendentious," and added
that referring to waterboarding as torture would have
amounted to "taking sides in a political dispute."
Yet, before Bush and Dick Cheney came along, it
wouldn't have occurred to anyone that waterboarding
wasn't torture, as the Times's own archives show.
It's not as though we didn't know better. During the
last presidential campaign, John McCain, himself a
victim of torture during the Vietnam war, unloaded on
fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani when the former New
York mayor suggested that waterboarding wasn't tor-
ture. On another occasion, McCain pointed out, cor-
rectly, that waterboarding was among the crimes for
which Japanese officers were executed after the sec-
ond world war.
Does a single word matter? After all, Keller says of
waterboarding that "we describe the practice vividly,
and we point out that it is denounced by international
covenants and human rights advocates as a form of
torture."
Keller's justification is similar to that voiced by Na-
tional Public Radio ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, in
an interview last year with her network's On the Me-dia program. "Why is it so important to call something
torture?" she asked. "You know, when you describe the
by Dan Kennedy
On 18 September 1945, barely a month after the Japa-
nese surrender had brought the second world war to a
close, a sickening story appeared on page two of the New
York Times. Headlined "Shanghai Reveals Torture Se-
crets", the article, by Tillman Durdin, detailed torture
techniques used against inmates of the Bridge House, a
secret prison run by the Japanese in that Chinese city. The
victims included Chinese and American soldiers, who
suffered such horrors as lit cigarettes jammed up their
nostrils and the use of electric shocks. Durdin continued:
The water treatment was another violent torture the
Japanese used in the Bridge House. The American
[an unnamed source], explaining it, said his face
was covered with a towel, except for the nostrils.
Then a guard, using a tea kettle, poured water
slowly down the victim's nostrils. If the victim did
not swal-
l o w h e
drowned; if
he swal-
lowed he
b e c a m e
bloated, suffering extreme abdominal pain.
This is waterboarding, and Durdin's report is signifi-
cant mainly because of his straightforward description of
it as torture. Not that anyone would have thought twice
about that description back then.
According to a study released recently by the Joan
Shorenstein Centre on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Har-
vard, the New York Times and other major papers invaria-
bly referred to waterboarding as torture until the Bush-
Cheney administration began using it to extract informa-
tion from suspected terrorists. After 2002, the word tor-
ture all but disappeared from news accounts of waterboarding.
As the students who conducted the study observe:
The results of this study demonstrate that there
was a sudden, significant, shift in major print me-
dia's treatment of waterboarding at the beginning of
the 21st century. The media's modern coverage of
waterboarding did not begin in earnest until 2004,
when the first stories about abuses at Abu Ghraib
were released. After this point, articles most often
When it comes to waterboarding, labels matter The press's failure to call waterboarding torture impedes honest discussion of the darkest years of the Bush presidency
Major papers referred to waterboarding as torture
until the Bush-Cheney administration began using it.
Will you take action against torture?
The facts (as known to date; many documents remain secret)
1. There is virtual consensus in the international community
that waterboarding is torture.
2. Torture is against the law. In a land of laws, lawbreakers are
subject to prosecution.
3. George Bush and Dick Cheney, while in office, approved the
use of waterboarding which was used on detainees at Guan-
tanamo and elsewhere.
Therefore:
4. Attorney General Eric Holder should prosecute George Bush
and Dick Cheney.
5. Please call Eric Holder’(202-514-2001). Remind him of the
above—he must prosecute those who made the torture policies!
6. Please call the White House (202-456-1111) and tell Presi-
dent Obama to let Attorney General Eric Holder do his job in this
regard.
7. See www.nrcat.org for a statement of religious groups sup-
porting an investigation of Bush Administration torture.
—submitted by Stan Becker, Baltimore, MD
20 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
by Mike Ferner
A veteran‘s perspective makes it clear
that two major points must be made in re-
sponse to President Obama‘s announcement
regarding combat troops leaving Iraq.
First, there is no such thing as ―non-
combat troops.‖ It is a contradiction in terms.
It is internally inconsistent. It is illogical. It is
simply not true.
Ask any of the millions of men and
women who went through basic training and
they can tell you that every U.S. troop any-
where in the world was indoctrinated and
trained in the basics of combat. While in
Iraq, the transition from mechanics or com-
munications back to combat-ready soldier
takes but an order. ―Non-combat troops‖ is
simply the latest in a long line of military
euphemisms meant to obscure painful reality.
The second point can best be made by
drafting a section of the President‘s remarks
for him. If Veterans For Peace were to do
that it would read something like this:
And now, fellow Americans, let us begin a
new era of candor and honesty about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, I’m referring to the true costs of war—
something that must be considered if we are
to judge whether continued war is worth it.
You have seen that the cost to taxpayers of these wars has exceeded one trillion dol-
lars, nearly all of which has been considered
“off budget,” appropriated by extraordinary or “supplemental” spending bills. It may be hard to believe that, large though that figure
may be, it is but the smaller portion of what
we will spend in total.
We are already investing unprecedented amounts in Veterans Administration staff and
facilities to try and cope with the millions of
men and women who have cycled through a war zone deployment—and of course many
have been through multiple deployments.
Our experience thus far tells us to expect literally hundreds of thousands of cases of
PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injuries—injuries that are often difficult to diagnose at first and difficult to treat. These are, of
course, in addition to the many thousands of
visibly wounded who, at great expense, must go through rehabilitation and a lifetime of support in order to function adequately.
Thousands more will require years, perhaps decades, of long-term care because their in-juries have left them so broken they require
round-the-clock attention.
But since we are initiating an era of can-
dor, we go further—and by that I mean the cost to families, communities and society as a whole. Volumes have literally been written
on this point, but let me leave you with a brief example you can easily expand for
yourself.
We have already heard of the abnormally high rate of suicides among returning veter-
ans. The real number is undoubtedly higher since some will always remain a mystery. We’ve heard also of a growing tide of domes-tic violence that leaves families broken and
terrorized.
Beyond the draining medical, psychologi-
cal and emotional costs to the individuals directly involved, imagine the cost to the
communities where this occurs: whole battal-ions of police, fire, EMT, courts, probation officers, social workers and sadly, prison guards will be needed to deal with the true
costs of war. It is uncomfortable to admit, but this is indeed one area of the economy I
can guarantee will grow significantly.
Then there is an exponentially greater cost borne by the people of Iraq and Afghani-
stan—greater in every way: emotionally, economically, in human suffering, in de-stroyed opportunities, in shattered lives and
minds, in hearts that will remain forever bro-ken. We can do precious little to repair much of that kind of damage. But I can tell you
this, my fellow Americans, we must at least pay the bill to rebuild the roads, water and sewer plants, hospitals, schools, and resi-
dences we have destroyed.
It is not pleasant to describe such things
and indeed, these costs will continue to weigh heavily on our nation well into our grandchildren’s generation. But we cannot
pretend otherwise.
This is the message that should have
come from the White House if truth were
indeed the coin of the realm. We didn‘t hear
it, but that makes it no less true.
Mike Ferner is national president of Veter-
ans For Peace and Contributing Editor to
War Crimes Times.
Veteran responds to Obama’s rebranded occupation
If Truth Were the Coin of
the Realm
Above (August 31, 2010): “I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.“
Below (May 1, 2003): “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
— L e t t e r s — Expanding the Definitions of
“War” and “War Criminal”
I have an opinion about war
crimes and those who commit
war crimes: ALL war is a crime.
First, I'd like to expand the
definition of "war" to everything
that contributes to an unsustain-
able economy, to the vast gulf
between those who have too
much and those who struggle to
stay alive. To paraphrase Eisen-
hower, the USA's war economy
is grand larceny against the entire
planet.
The worst criminals will al-
ways seem to be the furthest
away from the criminal acts.
They will also profit the most
from said acts, both directly and
indirectly.
In terms of bombs and bullets,
it is important to refuse to be the
patsy for these criminals. Besides
being complicit, a criminal your-self, you will be the ONLY one
prosecuted either by the courts—
and/or by your own living con-
science.
Lest the reader think that the
term "war criminal" only applies to
the politicians, generals, "captains
of industry" and (yes) soldiers in
the field, consider this: Taxpayers
are both the field soldier and the
senator when they meekly submit
to the IRS, literally buying into the
war machine that America has be-
come.
Going to a rally, wearing a
peace button, and carrying a peace
sign do NOT cancel this out.
Pam Allee Portland, Oregon
Shameful Actions
None of the wars since at least
WW2 have been self-defense. The
U.S. has killed *millions* of inno-
cent people in Korea, Vietnam, and
Iraq.
Those people never attacked the
U.S. Not one single Vietnamese, or
Iraqi, or Korean ever attacked
America.
So why did we kill them? Ask yourself. Why do we kill in Af-
ghanistan today? Did the Taliban
attack America?
No Korean, Vietnamese, or
(Continued on page 21)
One who deceives will always find those who allow them-
selves to be deceived. / Politics have no relation to morals. —Niccolo Machiavelli
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 21
Bush-Cheney administration.
(4) Either charge and give a fair and
speedy jury trial to any and all prisoners
from the U.S. War of Terror held in U.S.
custody—or release them with safe pas-
sage to wherever they would like to go...
and begin the process immediately.
(5) Close any and all prisons such as
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc.
holding such prisoners and then borrow
some of those big bulldozers that Israel
uses to destroy the homes of the Pales-
tinians and totally destroy those prisons.
(6) Immediately stop all U.S. funding
to the terrorist state Israel and open a
truly independent and transparent inves-
tigation into the June 8, 1967 Israeli at-
tack on the USS Liberty which killed 34
U.S. Sailors and Marines and wounded
171 more...and then prosecute all those
guilty, both involved in the Israeli attack
and those involved in the U.S. cover-up
of the attack.
(7) Remove all U.S. sanctions on Iran
and leave them the hell alone.
(8) Bring the U.S. Naval Armadas
back from both Costa Rica and the Per-
sian Gulf.
(9) Immediately repeal the Patriot
Acts, the 2006 Military Commissions
Act, the 2007 John Warner Defense Au-
thorization Act, Presidential Directive
51, and all other un-Constitutional and
tyrannical legislation and executive or-
ders...to include all the signing state-
ments written during both the Bush and
Obama administrations.
(10) Launch truly independent and
transparent investigations into the attacks
of 9/11/01, to include answering each
and every question posed by the 9/11
victims‘ families, and investigate the
evidence submitted by the over 1,200
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Also investigate the members of the Pro-
ject for a New American Century and
their involvement in the attacks of
9/11/01. Prosecute and hold accountable
to the fullest extent of the law all those
guilty in the crimes of 9/11/01.
Philip C. Restino, Jr. Port Orange, FL
Agent Orange Legislation
“in the hopper”
Work in certain Congressional offices
been killed). He continues to keep Guan-
tanamo open, with its sham courts and
tainted convictions. He has sanctioned
the killing of American citizens without
giving them the Constitutional safe-
guards of due process as outlined in the
Constitution. And yes, the President con-
tinues to engage in illegal wars, and
worse, labels the extraction of some
troops from Iraq as the ―end of combat
operations.‖ Gee, I feel like I have seen
this train coming down the tracks be-
fore . . . .
When you compromise with evil, you
simply end up in Hell. Take note, it
makes no difference which political
party is pulling the levers of power if
their actions are antithetical to justice
and equality and personal liberty. If their
political agenda does not embrace these
intangible human qualities then their
moral agenda, however propagandized
and filtered for public consumption, has
no actual foundation.
I have waited two long years for
―change.‖ And yes, I understand the
President inherited a mess from his
predecessor, but you do not rid yourself
of the mess by continuing the same for-
eign policies and the same personnel to
guide you in a new direction.
The adoption of Central Florida's
impeachment resolution would send a
resounding message to the Democratic
power structure. Of course, they would,
no doubt, disparage the resolution as just
another statement coming from the
―professional Left,‖ just as they have
disparaged labor unions, critical media
personalities, and others who question
the progressive credentials of the present
administration. But I see nothing wrong
with a few professional protestors, be
they Left, Right, or Center, since the
world is obviously plagued by so many
professional oppressors.
Jerry Steele Cameron, MO
President Obama’s “To Do” List
Congressman Alan Grayson asked his
constituents, ―What Should I Tell the
President?‖ I responded:
(1) Call an immediate ceasefire to all
U.S. Military involved in the occupations
of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa
and wherever else U.S. personnel are
operating in this bogus U.S. War of Ter-
ror.
(2) Begin removing the troops imme-
diately and have all U.S. troops, private
contractors, and any other excuses for
being there fully out of Iraq, Afghani-
stan, Pakistan, Africa and wherever else
U.S. personnel are operating in this bo-
gus U.S. War of Terror within no later
than 90 days. (3) Release all of the torture photos,
memos, videos, testimony, etc. related to
the Bush-Cheney administration and
launch truly independent and transparent
investigations into the war crimes of the
— L e t t e r s — has been on-going to craft legislation for
a bill on Agent Orange/Dioxin that
would, for the first time in our country‘s
history, lend a hand to the estimated
three million Vietnamese who suffer
today from a decade of chemical warfare
during the 1960s. The call for funding
will cover four areas: 1) significant assis-
tance to the Vietnamese victims, 2)
cleanup of the dioxin-contaminated lands
in Vietnam (the ‗hot-spots‘), 3) assis-
tance to the children and grandchildren
of affected U.S. vets, and 4) addressing
the needs of affected Vietnamese-
Americans.
Although several million dollars were
designated a few years ago to clean up
the former Danang base, very little work
has been done. The Agent Orange Dia-
logue Group, started by the Ford Foun-
dation, has called for $300 million to be
given for assistance and clean-up, but,
movement has been exceedingly slow –
and this amount is pitifully small com-
pared to the need, estimated by some to
be 12 billion!
Veterans For Peace has always been
involved with the Agent Orange/Dioxin
issue due mainly from the devastating
effects of the defoliant on American vet-
erans. Tens of thousands have died and
been sickened by the dioxin—―the most
deadly chemical known to science.‖ In
2004, then-president of VFP, the beloved
David Kline, co-founded the Vietnam
Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility
Campaign (VAORRC) to support the
Vietnamese lawsuit for compensation.
That legal effort was dismissed at the
Supreme Court level in 2009.
Congressional legislation is now the
only recourse.
Please sign an on-line ―Post Card‖ to
Congress at the Vietnam Agent Orange
Relief and Responsibility Campaign
Website: www.agentorange-vn.org.
Please donate toward this effort at the
same site. You can donate on-line
(through PayPal) or mail checks payable
to ―Veterans For Peace/VAORRC‖ to:
Vietnam Agent Orange
Relief & Responsibility Campaign P.O.Box 303 - Prince Station
New York, NY 10012-0006
For more information please contact
us at [email protected]
Nadya Williams VFP Ch. 69, San Francisco, CA
Iraqi ever attacked the U.S. American
aggression was illegal and immoral. It
was not Self-Defense.
Ninety percent of those people killed,
were noncombatants, even in Iraq it has
not changed. Children, elderly, bystanders.
The U.S. Congress, the President, and the
military command knowingly kill inno-
cent civilians because they regard the
lives of U.S. soldiers more valuable.
These are horrific deaths—shot with
automatic weapons, artillery, blasted by
high explosives, burned to death, buried
under buildings, often dying lingering
deaths from infection or disease, or star-
vation. That's what America did, in Iraq.
The reputation and standing of the
soldiers, the veterans, and the Congress
and the President—as individuals, as
well as their institution—comes from the
character of their actions, not by wishful
thinking. And our actions have been
shameful.
Todd Boyle Kirkland, WA
Impeach Obama
The Central Florida chapter of Veter-
ans for Peace recently introduced a reso-
lution calling for the impeachment of
President Obama for the continuation
and expansion of war crimes initiated by
President George W. Bush. I fully under-
stand the political and social enormity of
such an action, but believe impeachment
to be warranted if one only looks at facts.
If we truly believe in peace and social
justice then we must be consistent with
both our praise and our criticisms. And,
holding a belief system without actually
acting upon it is tantamount to surrender.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theo-
logian who Hitler executed for speaking
truth to power, said this: ―If you believe
in God, and do not act, you are seeking
nothing more than ‗cheap grace.‘‖ To
know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that
this government has committed war
crimes, and yet not to act upon that
knowledge, is a dereliction of our legal,
moral and patriotic duty. We can't pick
and choose—we are either for unquali-
fied justice or we do nothing and sanc-
tion the continued breaking of interna-
tional law while those that pursue their
activities give a wink and nod and continue to
kill innocents, continue to rob the earth
of its resources, and continue to eco-
nomically and morally bankrupt a nation.
My revelatory moment came during
the 2008 presidential primaries when
candidate Obama responded to a ques-
tion about the possible prosecution of
war crimes committed during the previ-
ous administration. His response: ―We
must look forward, not backward.‖ At
that point I understood that he was al-
ready part of a system that selectively
chooses who to prosecute, and who to let
walk free. For instance, the President
continues to use Xe (Blackwater) even
after that corporation was found to have
broken the law over 300 times (this does
not include its mercenary actions in
which untold numbers of civilians have
Photo
©
copyright
Chuck F
ager
22 Fall 2010 The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Out of the mirror they stare,Imperialism's faceAnd the interna-
tional wrong.
—W.H. Auden, 1907-1973, writing in 1939
Twenty years ago this August, with
a green light from America, Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had
walked into possibly the biggest trap in
modern history, unleashing Iraq's two-
decade decimation, untold suffering,
illegal bombings, and return of diseases
previously eradicated in what can also
only be described as UN-sponsored
infanticide.
The reason for the Kuwait invasion,
has been air brushed out of the fact
books by Britain and America, and
been presented as the irrational and
dangerous act of a belligerent tyrant
who was a threat to his neighbors. He
had, they pointed out piously, attacked,
then fought an eight year war with Iran,
and exactly two years to the month
after the August 20, 1988 ceasefire,
invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990.
It was, of course, not quite that sim-
ple. The U.S. engineered the fall of the
democratic government of Prime Min-
ister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran,
resulting from his nationalizing the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now Brit-
ish Petroleum (BP) in 1953. After two
years of economically ravaging sanc-
tions, the U.S. installed Shah Reza
Pahvlavi (whose savage state police,
SAVAK, were trained by General Nor-
man Schwarzkopf Sr., father of Gen-
eral "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf
Commander of the 1991 Operation
Desert Storm, who famously declared
at the time of the ceasefire: "...no one
left to kill..."). Under the Shah, oil ar-
rangements satisfactory to the United
States were, of course, restored.
Five years later, across the border in
Iraq, the British installed monarchy
was overthrown and the popular leader
of the anti-British uprising, General
Abdel Karim Kassem, began national-
izing the country's Western assets. It
took the CIA just five more years to
bring about his overthrow. They picked
the wrong collaborators.
The nascent Ba'ath Party, with Sad-
dam Hussein as Vice President, em-
barked on nationalizing the oil indus-
try. President Nixon and National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger schemed with
Iran to arm the Kurds and weaken the
Iraqi government. Iraq was placed on
the list of supporters of terrorism.
Interestingly, Saddam, and the Shah
quietly came to a U.S.-excluded, mutu-
ally beneficial agreement, and aid to
the Kurds was cut.
In 1980, the year after the Shah was
overthrown, to grass roots Iranian jubi-
lation, President Jimmy Carter an-
nounced the "Carter Doctrine" with
breath-taking political arrogance,
granting the U.S. the unilateral right to
intervene in the Persian Gulf region to
protect U.S. oil demands.
With (broadly) a U.S. political nod
and wink, Iraq invaded Iran with the
U.S. aiding both sides in a war where
the estimated million lives lost equal
those lost in Rwanda and Armenia, in
each case cited as a genocide.
Iraq was also perceived as a more
secular buffer against fundamentalist
tendencies in Iran, under Ayatollah
Khomeni. (Ironically, now, Iraq is
largely politically dominated by funda-
mentalist Iranian-backed factions, who
came in with the invasion, seemingly
due to blind ignorance of the region by
the British and Americans, their useless
―diploma ts ,‖ and unemployable
―Middle East experts.‖
Carter won the 2002 Nobel Peace
Prize. His Carter Center blurb informs:
"President Carter has been committed
to peace in the Middle East since his
White House days (and) advancing
human rights, accountability, and the
rule of law," in the region. Devotion is
to: "Peace with Justice" and "Waging
Peace."
In 1984, President Reagan ordered
the sharing of top-secret intelligence
with Iraq and Iran. The following year,
Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra
infamy, informed Iranian authorities
that the U.S. would help Iran over-
throw Saddam Hussein.
Subsequently, when Iraq looked
vulnerable in America's (arguably)
proxy bloodbath, U.S. military hard-
ware and other assistance was ratch-
eted up. Breathtaking duplicity being
the order of the decade, General Nor-
man Schwarzkopf, then head of the
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
quietly intervened by re-flagging Ku-
waiti tankers with U.S. flags. Thus, if
attacked, it would be deemed an attack
on the United States. The U.S. then
began bombing Iranian oil platforms.
The scales tipped for Iraq, and in
Augus t 1988 the cea sefi r e was
signed—and the (U.S.) Center for Stra-
tegic and International Studies immedi-
ately began a two-year study on the
outcome of a war between the United
States and Iraq. The following year,
with much of Iraq's youth "stone dead,"
terribly wounded, or imprisoned in
Iran, its Air Force nearly wiped out,
and the country financially on its
knees, the U.S. renamed its War Plan
1002—dreamt up to counter a Soviet
confrontation—to War Plan 1002-90,
designating Iraq as the new threat.
Iraq, needing to recoup the billions the war had cost, now addressed the
problem of Kuwait's alleged systematic
"slant drilling" under the Iraq/Kuwait
border, into Iraq's Rumeila oil field,
siphoning off, claimed Iraq, millions of
dollars worth of oil. Iraq wanted—and
desperately needed—reparation. Not in
dispute is that over the eight years of
war, Kuwait had moved its borders
northwards into Iraq by some consider-
able distance, by establishing en-
croaching settlements. Iraq wanted its
territory back. Kuwait and the Gulf
states were also manipulating oil
prices, to hard-pressed Iraq's disadvan-
tage, with Washington's backing, so
claimed Iraq with some justification.
Iraq, additionally, wanted to negoti-
ate to lease two islands, Warbah and
Bubiyan, from Kuwait for additional
access to the Gulf, which would also
have reduced residual tensions with
Tehran. Tiny Kuwait, population at the
time under two million, "an oil com-
pany masquerading as a country," as
one commentator remarked, and confi-
dent of mighty Washington's backing,
refused negotiation as it had in 1975
and 1980.
After two years of attempts to re-
solve the problems with Kuwait, in late
July, 1990, Saddam Hussein met with
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April
Glaspie. With the border tensions
mounting, she told him: ―I have direct
instruction from the President (Bush
Sr.) to seek better relations with Iraq.‖
She even expressed the United States
apology for a critical article on Iraq by
the American Information Agency,
designating resultant broadcasted com-
ments: ―...cheap and unjust.‖ Adding
that: ―President Bush...is not going to
declare an economic war against Iraq.‖
She continued: ―I admire your ex-
traordinary efforts to rebuild your
country. I know you need funds. We
understand that and our opinion is that
you should have the opportunity to
rebuild your country.‖ (How arro-
gantly, patronizingly kind!) Then: ―But
we have no opinion on Arab-Arab con-
flicts, like your border dispute with
Kuwait.‖
Her conversation followed on from
a meeting the previous April, between
Glaspie and President Saddam, with
U.S. Senators Robert Dole, Alan Simp-
son, Howard Metzenbaum, James
McClure and Frank Murkowski, who
had traveled to Iraq with President
Bush's blessings ostensibly to form
better relations and trade relations with
Iraq and to assure that President Bush
would oppose any suggestion of sanc-
tions on Iraq.
President Saddam commented later
to Glaspie that: ―There is nothing left
for us to buy from America except
wheat. Every time we want to buy
The War on Iraq: Five U.S. Presidents, Five British Prime
Ministers, Thirty Years of Duplicity, and Counting....
The War Crimes Times • WarCrimesTimes.org Fall 2010 23
something they say it is forbidden. I am
afraid, one day, you will say ‗You are
going to make gunpowder out of
wheat.‘‖ 1
The response to the invasion of Ku-
wait was, of course, an embargo of
unique severity (UN Security Council
Resolution 661) imposed on Hiroshima
Day August 6, 1990.
All overseas assets were frozen, as
were oil sales, thus, effectively all im-
ports in a country which imported two
thirds of absolutely everything (on ad-
vice given by the United Nations via
their UN Food and Agriculture Organi-
zation). Iraq faced famine. Infant mor-
tality doubled in just four months, by
December 1990. Advice to any country
when outside consultants counsel relin-
quishing self-sufficiency: Don't do it.
The day before the embargo was im-
posed, President H.W. Bush stated:
―What's emerging is nobody seems to
be showing up as willing to accept any-
thing less than total withdrawal from
Kuwait of the Iraqi forces, and no pup-
pet regime…Iraq, having committed
brutal, naked aggression, ought to get
out, and that this concept of their in-
stalling some puppet—leaving be-
hind—will not be acceptable....‖
Britain's then Prime Minister, Mar-
garet Thatcher pitched in: ―... I think it
is quite different when you have a na-
tion which has violated all rules of
United Nations Charter, which has
gone in with guns and tanks to take and
invade another country, which would
have far-reaching consequences if it
were left like that for every other coun-
try in the world….‖ (Given America's
British-backed bombings; invasions;
imposed, useless, corrupt, foreign pass-
port-holding puppet governments, im-
posed since the Balkans in 1999 alone,
irony is redundant.)
Without Congressional approval,
Bush ordered forty thousand U.S.
troops to ―defend Saudi Arabia,‖ de-
spite no sign of any intention by Iraq to
attack the Kingdom. Washington lied
that Iraq's troops were massing on
Saudi's border. They were not.
Entirely forgotten, is that just ten
days after the invasion, Saddam Hus-
sein, a staunch supporter of Palestinian
rights, announced that Iraq would with-
draw from Kuwait, if Israel withdrew
from Israeli occupied Palestinian terri-
tories. The United States rejected the
offer, out of hand. Subsequently Iraq
proposed withdrawal without the stipu-
lation relating to Palestine. Washington
rejected it as ―a complete nonstarter.‖
For Washington, seemingly, war, war,
is ever preferable to jaw, jaw. Heaven
forbid peace should ever reign, the
military-industrial complex's billion
dollar munitions bonanza would dry up
and the remnants of the U.S. economy
with it.
The U.S., having refused all nego-
tiation, then dispatched an extra three
hundred and sixty thousand troops to
the Gulf. At the end of November, the
UN Security Council passed UNSCR
678, threatening force if Iraq did not
withdraw by January 15th—Iraq hav-
ing offered to withdraw, albeit with
conditions on August 12th, and without
conditions a short time later.
In Geneva, on January 9, 1991,
then Secretary of State James Baker (a
―diplomat‖ who stated: ―We will re-
duce Iraq to a pre-industrial age.‖) met
Iraq's Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz,
with a letter from Bush Sr. promising
the destruction of Iraq if Iraq had not
withdrawn from Kuwait by January
15. Tareq Aziz stated he would not
deliver the letter.
On January 17, the forty-two-day
assault on Iraq began, as is now well
documented, deliberately destroying all
infrastructure necessary to sustain soci-
ety, including the deliberate targeting
of all water purification facilities, with
an exact timeline of how long it would
take Iraq's complex water system ―to
fully degrade‖ issued to all NATO
Command Headquarters.2 Somewhere
in Iraq's ashes lay all the painstakingly
crafted legal treaties, conventions, and
principles on war crimes and treatment
of civilians in conflict, never to surface
again, as far as the U.S. and UK were
concerned, arguably now officially
signed up to ―rogue state‖ status.
On February 21, the USSR stated
that Iraq had agreed to a complete
withdrawal, without conditions. The
United States rejected the agreement
unless Iraq left by mid-day on February
23rd. Interestingly, on the rare occa-sions the U.S. and UK moot a with-
drawal, the public is told, ad nauseum,
that this is a complicated process which
takes time and cannot be achieved
overnight. The U.S. ground assault,
however, almost could be. It started on
February 23. Three days later, when
the Iraqi troops did withdraw, both
troops and civilians were strafed merci-
lessly from both ends of the road to
Basra, resulting in a massacre—‖a tur-
key shoot‖ as described by the forces
of General Norman Schwarzkopf, a
seemingly psychologically disturbed
individual.
The ceasefire was finally agreed by
America on February 28, five months
and sixteen days of decimation after
Saddam Hussein had first offered to
withdraw.
Two days later, the U.S. killed
thousands more heading from the south
towards Baghdad, in another enormous
war crime for which no one has ever
faced trial.
In Afghanistan's invasion and ongo-
ing massacres by the occupiers, a daily
gate-crashing more resembling the
towering illegality of the occupation of
Iraq, we hear more of Margaret
Thatcher‘s now-laughable lauding of
the values and integrity of the U.S. and
UK: ―The West is dealing with a per-
son who, without warning, has gone
into the territory of another state with
tanks, aircraft, and guns, has fought
and taken that state against interna-
tional law, against the will of that state,
and has set up a puppet regime. That is
the act of an aggressor which must be
stopped. While a person who will take
such action on one state will take it
against another state if he is not
stopped.‖
―President Saddam Hussein and
Iraq are aggressors. They have invaded
another country, they have taken it by
force—that is not the way we do things
in this world. Other countries have
rights, they have their right to their
nationhood, they have the right to their
territorial integrity. He has been rightly
branded as an aggressor, contrary to
international law, and it is not a ques-
tion of taunting, it is a question of earn-
ing the condemnation of the world and
the appropriate action which follows.‖
The ―Iron Lady‖ Thatcher, was as sub-
servient to Bush Sr. as her slippery
successor Blair was to Clinton and
baby Bush.
On August 21, Thatcher opined: ―I think
it is as well to remind ourselves how this
whole position started. It started be-
cause Saddam Hussein substituted the
rule of force for the rule of law and
invaded an independent country and
that cannot be allowed to stand.‖
This August 2010, with an esti-
mated three million dead in Iraq, as the
bell now tolls ever louder for Iran, and
with the near identical sleights of hand
and word being played out, as were
against Iraq—farcical, were it not so
sinisterly demented—Iran is (says the
U.S. and UK) hell-bent on making
―weapons of mass destruction.‖
Remember them? The weapons the
crazies are still searching for in Iraq?
The ones Iraq accounted for not having
in 11,800 pages, delivered to the UN in
December 2002, and stolen by the U.S.
mission to the UN?
With the substitution of ―the rule of
force‖ for ―the rule of law‖ seemingly
imminent, are there governments,
statesmen and women, world bodies
and institutions, unions—is there
enough people power to halt the jug-
gernaut on the Armageddon highway?
With the United Nations, as ever,
either complicit or asleep at the wheel,
can ―We the people‖ finally ―...save
succeeding generations from the
scourge of war‖ and the equivalent
unimaginable horrors of multiple
Hiroshimas and Nagasakis?
Footnotes and sources
Ramsey Clark, The Fire this Time: U.S.
Crimes in the Gulf (New York, NY:
Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992 ).
Geoff Simons, From Sumer to Saddam
(Houndmills, England: Macmillan,
1996 ).
1. Simons, pp. 314-316.
2. Felicity Arbuthnot, Allies Deliberately
Poisoned Iraq Public Water Supply In Gulf War, http://
www.commondreams.org/
headlines/091700-01.htm (September
2000)
Felicity Arbuthnot lives in London. She has written and broadcast widely
on Iraq, one of the few journalists to
cover Iraq extensively even in the mid-1990’s during the sanctions. She with Denis Halliday was senior researcher
for John Pilger’s Award winning docu-mentary: Paying the Price—Killing the
Children of Iraq.
© copyright Felicity Arbuthnot
Sanctions 1991-2003
This is a war against the children of Iraq on two fronts:
bombing…And the most ruthless embargo in modern his-
tory. According to Unicef, the United Nations Children's
Fund, the death rate of children under five is more than
4,000 a month—that is 4,000 more than would have died be-
fore sanctions. That is half a million children dead in eight
years. If this statistic is difficult to grasp, consider, on the
day you read this, up to 200 Iraqi children may die needlessly.
—John Pilger, ―Squeezed to Death,‖ The Guardian, March 2000
Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children
have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hi-
roshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright:
I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the
price is worth it.
—60 Minutes (May 1996)
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no such thing as a good shot the morning news says today Mumbai is hot 30 killed, more injured, that is clear the shot heard round the world is every shot the neighbor's kid's a sniper who will spot our cats in his crosshairs, far or near how can I tell my own backyard from what is not? in Vietnam we saw the bodies in their slots as we ate our dinners we shed our tears the shot heard round the world is every shot the tsunami's wreckage became our own rot every hour the body count we'd hear how can I tell my own backyard from what is not? in Iraq they hid the dead that we'd forgot but still the silence makes it more severe the shot heard round the world is every shot now to begin again what is never forgot destroy each gun, each bomb or tank, each spear the shot heard round the world is every shot how can I tell my own backyard from what is not?
—Christina Starobin, 11/27/08
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